FARRAKHAN'S INTERNATIONAL WEBCAST

For those of you who continue to stay abreast of what is happening in the black organizations that have secured a different following than the National Action Network/Operation PUSH/NAACP/National Urban League crowd, Louis Farrakhan will deliver an international webcast this morning that you should see.

It started at 11:00 AM.

It is expected that the black nationalist sectors would be gaining more supporters with the endorsement of the Nation of Islam of the Obama administration. I suspect that the Nation of Islam continues to maintain an intensive recruitment campaign among the black men within the nation's prison system. I've noticed that Farrakhan is referencing the Bible in his sermons and mentioning Jesus more than he had in the past. As more black men continue to distance themselves from the black church, I expect that a portion of them will gravitate to the male supremacist culture of the Nation of Islam organization.

As the reality of black male annihilation begins to sink in with black men across this country in the next decade, I believe that more of them will take refuge in organizations that have a platform of affirming the headship of black men.

I'll be posting some remarks while the webcast is underway so please feel welcome to stop by if you would like to watch the webcast and add comments while he is making his presentation.

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WEBCAST NOTES

The webcast started at 11:00 AM.

Ishmael Muhammad opened the meeting with a Muslim prayer and remarks.

Mustafa Farrakhan gave remarks and mentioned that it is time to rise up and implement solutions for the black community. (Yada, yada...)

Ishmael Muhammad returned to the pulpit and introduced Louis Farrakhan and Farrakhan started his presentation at 11:22 AM. I'll add more notes as soon as his presentation is underway.

Farrakhan started out stating that when the black women is lifted up then the black man will be elevated. He said that the conflicts between black men and black women have a debilitating impact on both groups. He spoke about black girls being abused in their own communities and said that violation of black girls has become pandemic. He mentioned that women who have been abused and have been married can not give themselves completely to their husband because there is something inside of her that is holding her back.

Farrakhan says that the man is a degree superior to the woman. He said that God made men a degree above the woman so that women can't be naturally equivalent to men. {yawn}

He said that men are struggling to be men and that women are struggling to be a woman. He said that Allah created the woman so that man would find peace and quiet of mind within the woman. {yawn}

12:45 PM

I'll add more comments later.

1:48 PM

I disagree with Farrakhan's observation that women are struggling to be women. I think that black women haven't been allowed to be women - due to wholesale black male abdication from black families and their full-scale destruction of the "community" aspect of black residential areas. There are plenty of black men who would say that they can't be blamed for the climate of black areas but I believe that they have played a huge part in the level of danger that exists for black women in black areas.

The presentation of Louis Farrakhan just ended. I honestly don't think that the message was compelling at all. He reiterated many themes that he has presented before - male responsibility, male supremacy, male moral reinforcement and female subservience.

I think it was important, though, that he mention the predator environment that black girls are living in. At this forum, black women mention this issue repeatedly but I rarely find that black men are writing about the stalking of black girls and the violation of black girls. I don't think that Farrakhan went far enough. I would have liked for him to provide an analysis about why violation of black women has been normalized. He mentioned that hormones in the food supply have created little girls who are developing much more rapidly than what should be deemed normal.

I don't think that Farrakhan's message has changed.

He is often still pointing out that external forces have created the conditions that black people are in, and he also mentions that there are spiritual forces that are operating. I think that he is attempting to appeal to non-Muslims who do not much spiritual knowledge or theological construction of any faith at all.

I expected Farrakhan to talk about the direction of N.O.I. and the political landscape for blacks over the next four years but he didn't mention that in his presentation.

He spent a lot of time talking about the fractured relationship between black men and black women. As I was listening to him, I thought about the reactions of many black men about the black divestment platform that upwardly-mobile black women are beginning to embrace more readily. I've been teaching on black divestment intermittently at this forum for the last 20 months. The predictable black nationalist response to black divestment would be to de-black divested black women and to launch accusations that any black women who would support divestment have issues with being black.

The black nationalist response would not consist of an admission of the failure of black men (as a group) to develop the types of capital that would cause black women to choose to make an investment in them. Black women who examine the resources of black men realize that they can gain much more by keeping their monetary, emotional and political resources away from black men in order to create other investments that have greater returns.

The black nationalist response would be to attempt to convince black women that their destiny is tied to black men and that they will never be able to separate their own existence from the fate of black men. Many black women are still struggling with the process of redefining themselves.

Are you black before you are a woman? Does race determine your self-definition in our society more than gender? Some black women would say yes, and others would say no.

Farrakhan's message reinforces the "village mentality" for black people, which diminishes the emotional independence of black women and favors their intertwined identity with the destiny of black men. Farrakhan would tell divested black women that they can not function apart from "the village" and that God never intended for black women to discard black men because doing so would mean discarding a part of themselves.

Farrakhan sees black women as an extension of black men. There are still many black women who have a lot of difficulty rejecting that definition.

Farrakhan touched upon homosexuality and its growing acceptance but he seemed to back away from any pronouncements about the impact of homosexuality on the black family structure and functionality. He mentioned that chemicals in the water were able to change the male fish into female fish. I found that to be very interesting.

Farrakhan believes that the black community can be reconstructed if black men become men. It is troubling that he doesn't outline a plan for black men to internalize a new construction of black manhood. When we recently had a guest columnist to respond to the black male annihilation equation, only three men provided comments in the comment section and none of the men analyzed the equation that I had presented. I don't think that Farrakhan would have a counter-strategy to offer black men that would reverse the annihilation process. In his view, the black man who is under submission to the Muslim God can never be annihilated. I can't accept that fantasy.

Farrakhan still views black men as the essential ingredient in black communities - without acknowledging the extremely long path that lies ahead for those black men who want to address black male abdication. Whenever black men talk about the black community, it seems that they are talking about "joint" efforts with black women and are not talking about black men dismantling their dependency on black women for their own survival as a group. Why don't we hear black men talking about repairing the black community by themselves? Because they know that they are incapable of doing it by themselves. I believe that is the crucial point that Farrakhan has avoided.

GIVE THANKS UNTO THE LORD FOR HE IS WORTHY!

I chose this video clip since I love the ministry of this song. I know that Donnie McClurkin is being heavily criticized online due to his remarks at the recent COGIC conference. I don't claim to know anything about him, but I do know that he is loved by the God I serve. I don't claim to know what his relationship with God is right now, but I do know this: There is room at the Cross!

There is so much that each one of us can be thankful for.

God has been an ever-present help in my life and I am grateful. It is a blessing to be forgiven and redeemed.

With the economy in such bad shape, I know that many people feel that their lives may not be what they want them to be at this time, but each one of us knows that things could be much worse than they are right now.

I am thankful for the consistent love and the tangible and constant support of my ministry that my family gives to me - even though they are not Christians. I am grateful that they continue to cheer me on as I continue to labor for the God that they hear about but do not know.

I am so thankful for the privilege of proclaiming this great Gospel and for being one of the unlikely ones to be called to serve the bread to the masses.

I am thankful for my life and I am grateful to my friends who know me personally and have prayed with me and for me.

I am grateful to those of you who have never met me who have agreed with me in prayer for victory!

I am thankful for the peace that surpasses all understanding.

I am thankful for my ex-boyfriends who are (and have always been) such wonderful men. I am grateful that they have been great cheerleaders in my life. To each one of you, I still say that the ride with you was worth the fall. I thank you for your forgiveness of all of my flaws. I know that God will spiritually increase you and your wives and families - and for that I rejoice.

I am grateful to those of you who are regular contributors to this important forum for women and those who have supported this forum on your blog rolls.

I am grateful to those of you who have helped so many of the women who have come to this blog and have found your words in the comment section. I know that they have learned so much from you and I am grateful that you are part of the work we do here every day.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the women who continue to blow the trumpet for liberation (and to the loving men who affirm us)! You know who you are!

THE QUESTIONS WE DON'T WANT TO ASK AFTER WATCHING PRECIOUS JONES

The reactions among moviegoers who saw the film, "Precious" have been predictable. As usual, there is a segment of white moviegoers who believe that they have been consumers of "the black experience" by seeing the "Precious Jones" narrative. They probably don't see any correlation between Precious Jones and JonBenet Ramsey, though. No one wanted to believe that JonBenet Ramsey was being sexually abused in her own home - so they never looked for any evidence of it. No one asked any questions about JonBenet's home life - until she turned up dead in the basement with a note from her "unknown killer" (who started it and didn't like the penmanship, and then rewrote it.)

It was reported that JonBenet had been to the doctor for some "ailments" that girls her age don't have. But her life went on - as usual. Precious was pregnant at the age of 13 and no one seemed to think that was unusual - for a black girl in a ghetto - so she was not removed from the home by authorities while an investigation took place. Her life went on as usual.

In the film, Precious' school principal tossed her out of school after learning about her second pregnancy. She didn't seem the slightest bit concerned that Precious was pregnant with her second child at 16. It doesn't cross her mind that Precious could have been raped? Of course not. Precious is, afterall, a black girl, so rape suspicions need not enter into the equation. It is assumed that all of those black girls who are underage and pregnant must be having the time of their lives with unprotected sex.

Do you ever notice a sista or her teenager sucking his/her thumb at an age that seems completely inappropriate? Do you know that thumb-sucking that continues long after the appropriate age is almost always a sign of extreme childhood abuse or extensive trauma?

One question that we don't ask: Why don't we teach more black women to look for the behavioral signs of sexual abuse survivors?

Girls like JonBenet Ramsey can be abused under the radar for years for all of the same reasons that girls like Precious Jones can be abused under the radar for years. We decide that many things about their lives seem "typical".

The perpetual scowl on Precious Jones' face seemed "typical" for the girls like her - so no questions were asked. The pasted-on smile on JonBenet's face seemed "typical" for the girls like her - so no questions were asked.

No adults seemed to question the gargantuan girth of Precious Jones at the age of 16. No one wondered what type of emotional condition a girl has to be in for many years in order to reach 350 pounds. No one suspected compulsive eating or binge eating when seeing a 350-pound girl? Poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle can easily result in weight gain of 10 to 25 pounds a year with most adolescents. Overeating that doubles the "normal" body mass of an adolescent should cause some alarms to go off among responsible adults at school. No questions were asked?

None of the interviewers ask Gabby about the underlying medical or emotional reasons for her shocking obesity. White actresses face immediate inquisition by the media if their weight fluctuates by ten pounds. There is a media obsession with white waifs. It seems that a dangerously-obese black actress is not a cause for anyone to be concerned.

Is obesity now a political statement of our defiance of societal beauty standards? Mo'Nique "claimed" to love being obese. Her self-esteem issues were more apparent than she ever realized - false bravada, having multiple children with different men, a pattern of choosing men who allowed themselves to be dominated by her and could not elevate her. I believe that her confession about her sexual abuse history in Essence Magazine was the beginning of her self-interrogation about all of her methods of self-protection.

It's so politically-correct now to allow black women to make choices for their lives that can result in early death - and not focus on the dangers that we see. Wouldn't the public care if Miley Cyrus were more than twice the size that a person should be for her age? Oh never mind, she's black!

Putting aside for a moment, the questions that the general public does not ask about the Precious Jones narrative, what are the questions that black women don't ask about it?


In the last few weeks, I have been online reading some of the discussions about the film, "Precious". I came across an explosive discussion where a black male blogger was being verbally pummelled because he said that "Precious Fails The Black Community". He was referring to the film and not referring to the adolescent who had been abused all of her life.

What I found so perplexing about the reaction from the readers was the level of hostility and contempt exhibited by some of the people who were adding comments to the discussion. They were angry that Anthony Smith couldn't point to any women in his family whose lives resembled Precious Jones' life. Instead of being angry, shouldn't they have been elated?

Anthony Smith is entitled to say that the depiction of Precious Jones does not represent "the black experience" as he knows it. Why are there voices of disgust and reactions of unbelief whenever someone mentions that an idyllic childhood is "the black experience"? That's a question we never ask.

I know that there are plenty of women who are not like Precious Jones but there are plenty of women who are. T.D. Jakes said in the film, "Woman Thou Art Loosed", that sexual abuse is so prevalent that we can sit in any room of black women and say, "one, two, YOU! (While he thinks that one in three has been sexually abused. I think one in two have been sexually abused.)

I see so many black women who sit in the pews one Sunday after the next and they think that their rape histories are undetected. They think that they blend in among women like me - who have never been abused. But they are lying to themselves. They can't blend in because rape changes everything in a girl's life and in a woman's life. It does. Sexual violence shatters something very deep within the psyche. Even when it is shattered and is evenutally whole - it is still a repaired psyche that we are engaging with. Rape forever changes the lens that a woman operates with. That's why they aren't undetectable.

The scowl hidden under pasted-on smiles tells their story even when they don't tell it.

The way they gaze wistfully at photos of Barack Obama with his children tells their story. The way they converse with others about in-tact black families reveals how foreign the concept is to them.

Their emotional detachment (and resentments) towards blacks who had idyllic childhoods tells their story.

Their hostile confrontation of anyone who doesn't identify with their secret pain tells their story.

The way they seethe in the presence of black men (and attempt to hide it) tells their story.

The way that they embrace emotional intimacy among women with a unexamined desperation tells their story.

The ways that they nurse the secrecy of the violation tells their story.

No, they don't blend in among women who have never been raped or abused. This uncovers the question we don't ask: Why do black women want to pretend that they blend in? Why isn't it okay to have pride in being a survivor? When a person is truly healed from abuse, there would be no desire to tuck it away and pretend it never happened.


The 2004 movie "Woman Thou Art Loosed", presents the story of a fatherless black girl (Michelle) who is raped by her mother's boyfriend. The little girl tells her mother (Cassey) and her little dress is bloody. Cassey's boyfriend (Reggie) lies to the mother and says that the little girl is lying. The mother does not take her daughter to the hospital and begins to accuse the girl of lying. The little grows up with the rapist in the home and develops into an emotionally-wounded young woman who goes to prison. When asked about her daughter's rape, the mother says nonchalantly, "we all have our crosses to bear and our dresses to wear."

There are some women who were raped who actually expected it to happen to their daughter. Every female member of their family has been raped. One reason why women who have been raped by mother's boyfriend or by an uncle or older sibling or male cousin are deeply offended when they hear others say "this isn't my experience!" Perhaps they tell themselves that we have said, "this doesn't happen!"

We haven't said that.

Perhaps they become defensive because they feel that their experience has been erased by others. But it hasn't been.

What is missing in the discussions that I have been reading online about the film, "Precious" is the desire to identify all of the questions that we should be asking as black women that we choose not to ask.

There are many black women who feel that their rape was ignored by everyone. They carry very deep and festering wounds about it. Many rape survivors have a lot of pent-up rage that boils to the surface whenever anyone detaches themselves from someone's rape story. Suddenly, those women rewind the video tape in their minds and imagine that everyone is ignoring their rape all over again. But we aren't. Usually, she hasn't even mentioned her rape. Yet in her mind, she accuses us of ignoring her rape. This uncovers another question that we don't ask.

In our desire to sympathize and to demonstrate our support, we often do not dare to ask any questions that would introduce accountability for healing where it belongs - with the survivor and with those who lives have been affected by the rape and abuse.

The accountability for the crime belongs solely to the abuser and the rapist. The rapist is not able to create a healing path for the person who has been raped. Those attempts always fail.

Many women who have been raped seem to want us to valorize their pain. Why must we valorize it so that healing can begin?

This is another question that we don't ask.

Many women who have been raped and who talk about it openly seem to want their survivorship to be applauded and respected. I understand that need and I believe it is an important need. But it is a need that has to be fulfilled within - and not externally. It's deeply dysfunctional for black women to valorize each other's pain in order to acknowledge each other's identity.

Today, I blow my trumpet to draw attention to the rape survivor that I have never been. I speak to the rape survivor and say that I choose to valorize other aspects of you. I speak to the rape survivor and say that the horror of your rape does not define you for life. It will not, unless you decide that it should.

If rape is going to be pulled out of the closet and understood by all of us, then our sistas must be willing to break their lifelong silence and their conspiracy of secrecy. Secrecy has many valid reasons but it almost always fuels self-deception and it never diminishes inner pain.

The question we don't ask is: Do they feel that the rest of us will gain an profound understanding of their survivorship based on our own imaginations?

As black women, we will only learn from the truth about their journey when they dare to share that journey with us.

Many black women won't share the rape secret because they often make blanket assumptions about what our reactions will be. Many black women won't share the rape secret because they are waiting for permission to take out that shovel in their memory bank and dig, dig, dig. They don't want us to gasp at what flies to the top of the mound of dirt.

One woman sat next to me in a chair in a counseling session and she always had a lot of hostility in her face and in her body language. "You don't know anything about me, Reverend!" she snapped. "Do you want me to know anything about you?" I asked, staring into her eyes. Her body stiffened and then she shook her head and touched her cheek. "You can't relate to me!" she announced. "Then what made you come here today?" I asked. "I want prayer!" she scowled. "Okay. I'll pray for you. If there is something specific you want me to talk to God about, I'll...". She shook her head. One day, I said, "we are as sick as our secrets."

In the film, Precious didn't want to talk about the sexual abuse. When the social worker tried to get her to talk, she reacted with anger and total disrespect. Maybe she was afraid that telling her secret meant that she could no longer tuck away the rage. Our treatment of Precious Jones begins with raw honesty - our honesty and hers.

Until Precious told the truth about what had happened to her, and until she took an emotional risk with others, she was not able to receive the help and support that she deeply craved and desperately wanted. I think that is the major lesson for those women who see themselves in Precious Jones.

As much as we may want to care more about the healing of the rape survivor than the survivor does, the reality is that the rest of us can't care more about about the healing of the survivor than the survivor. It is easy for us to introduce many co-dependent dynamics when we choose to become responsible for the path that those who have been abused must "own" for themselves. We can support the journey of that path to healing but we can't "own" the path, and we can't force the journey.

The investment in healing begins in the heart of the survivor. Collective healing can not be the catalyst for individual responsibility for healing.

I have lost count of the number of rape survivors that I have met in the E.R. - and it's not that their faces are a blur. It's just that there are far too many to count.
I want them to understand that the healing doesn't begin when those who harmed them apologize. That day may never come.

The healing doesn't begin when other black women tell them that we all share their pain - because we can't actually share it when we have never been there.

The healing doesn't begin when those who pretended not to believe the rape occurred admit that they believe. It begins with the survivor affirming herself and affirming her inner truth to herself.

Aren't we all to blame for the rape that has been buried? This is another question that we don't ask.

All of us are responsible for the rape that occurred. Many rape survivors will say, "as long as rapists are out there, we are all responsible for their actions." "No, we aren't...", I rely, as I watch the shocked look on their faces. They don't expect a minister to say that.

I have to say that because I know that at least 70% of rapists will rape someone they know. The fact that those rapists' names are never in any police files is because they were never reported.

It took one woman on stage crying on Oprah's shoulder for Oprah to break down and admit publicly that she had been abused as a child by her uncle. I don't know what it will take for other adults who are survivors of abuse, but I know that none of us can address this problem if the survivors grant immunity to their rapists. That uncle who raped one child in the family has raped others. There are women who tell me that they had no idea that others were being raped. Rapists rarely rape once.

The question that we don't ask of raped women is too sensitive to cross our lips. Lean in so I can whisper it to you. What do you truly require from us in order to name your rapist? Do you know?

Mo'Nique named her older brother as her rapist. Dana "Queen Latifah" Owen named her caregiver as her molester. Oprah named her uncle as her rapist. Tyler Perry named his father as his abuser and tormentor. Michael named his father as his abuser and tormentor. They were in a position to insulate themselves from the retaliation prior to naming their abuser. This is key. They had a circle of emotional protection around them. They had a proactive plan to address the response that they would receive.

There are many women who tell me that there isn't any real social protection for rape survivors in black constructs. They're right. This means that they can't function as if there will be protection in those constructs. They need to deal with what exists in their present reality.

Every black woman's tragedy can not become my battle. I can't fight every battle. It's now time that our sistas who are rape survivors acknowledge that black women have not failed them by not making every black woman's battle a collective battle. When that realization sinks in, the hurt and resentment that some of our sistas have about our collective response to their (unspoken) horror will begin to deteriorate. If we could fight every battle as though it were our own, I think many black women would do it.

But we can't.

I say to the rape survivor that the door to healing is always open. No one can slam it shut because healing always begins from the inside.

No one can trap a rape survivor in shame - only the survivor can create that cage. Others can bring the bars for the cage but the survivor constructs the cage.

I hope that one of our sistas will read this discussion today and declare that today is liberation day.

Let's ask ourselves the questions that we've never asked before.

BLACK CONSERVATIVES BLOW THE TRUMPET

We have have several discussions at this blog about the vetting process for our allies. We haven't examined the numerous stumbling blocks that exist for black women within the political landscape. Many of us have recognized that black political leverage has been poorly appraised and has been incompetently executed in all of the major elections in the last two decades.

We have seen one candidate after another taking the allegiance of black voters for granted, and we have seen many black politicians using all types of race-baiting strategies in order to galvanize black support.

In the last month, we saw how quickly and easily black women online were being bamboozled about the Heather Ellis case. The blog headlines contained lies about the charges against her.

It's not new for black women to be force fed distorted interpretations of the facts of the case by those who want to heighten black outrage for the sole purpose of political grandstanding. These tactics are becoming more frequently on display. They are rarely refuted by black women who are expected to extend automatic solidarity to any black person for virtually any set of circumstances.

Let's examine how this mentality has influenced our political engagement.

Black women would benefit greatly from examining the patterns that we reinforce as we consider:
- our interpretation of Party platforms
- our observations about Party dynamics
- our interpretation of political branding (where one agenda is deemed "the black agenda" and where black men decide which social issues become "the black agenda")
- our willingness to grant racial solidarity in the political landscape without issuing any demands to elected officials or holding anyone accountable
- our guillibility in accepting media-crafted interpretations of power brokers within the Democratic and Republican Party

Most of you know that Glenn Beck had a show on Friday with black conservatives and there have been many blog discussions about it among black liberals.

Many black people have dismissed Glenn Beck as another "raving bigot" with a microphone. It was mentioned in the New York Daily News that the Anti-Defamation League reported: "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration". Their report mentions that, "Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama and to promote the idea that the president is dangerous."

I don't think that any of our presidents can be compared to Hitler. After all, Hitler was insane. The only aspect about Obama's influence that can be compared to Hitler's influence is the reaction of the black masses to Obama, and how Hitler supporters gave blind loyalty and gleefully placed him on a pedastal as the highest standard for all to emulate. Beyond that, I don't see how any reasonable argument can be made that draws any parallel that invokes Hitler.

The guests of the show did not discuss Beck's positions - yet I read several blog discussions which suggested that the guests of the show were ardent supporters of Glenn Beck. Distortion and deception is becoming so common in the political discussions that I see online that it is become rare to find any political forum that presents the facts.

Black conservatives do not have many opportunities to discuss their political priorities on television shows that have the type of expoure that Glenn Beck's show has garned. If they had been on Tavis Smiley's show, would they be called "Uncle Toms"? Would it be assumed that they are supporters of Tavis Smiley by being guests of the show to present their views?

Whenever I notice discussions about black Republicans among black people who aren't Republicans, there is usually sheer igorance on display. How many black women in the Democratic Party have watched the video of the Black Republican Forum?

How can black women strategize or mobilize without researching and understanding the entire political landscape? Is it easier to digest the news headlines and the sound-bites of political pundits and then "pretend" that we are knowledgeable about the political landscape?

While I am a supporter of Condi Rice, and would certainly vet her as an ally if I knew her personally, I do not support every Republican. In fact, my support of Condi Rice does not require that she uphold my views on every political issue.

I am ardent supporters of some people who don't share my perspectives on every issue. This seems to be quite rare with many black women. We need to find out why.

Identifying the reasons why will uncover the areas of racial manipulation that have been unaddressed among black women in the political landscape.

I mentioned in my recent post that I had encountered scores of black women who thought that affiliation with a group required support of all members of the group. Black people who embrace group think mentalities are often quite surprised to encounter blacks who do not.

If I mention that I am a Republican in a room full of black people, it won't surprise me to encounter many persons who think they know my positions on every political issue.

Roland Martin confronts this mentality in this one-minute video:



With the introduction of my series on alliance-building, I have led several discussions about the need for black women to identify better approaches for vetting allies. The vetting process can not be implemented effectively when blanket assumptions are used by black women to screen political allies. The vetting process can not be implemented effectively unless we demonstrate a willingness to consider political alliances with political factions that uphold differing views.

As I navigate the political landscape and identify prospective allies, my screening process does not elevate ideological conformity or ideological similarity. I am looking for ideological intersection.

I've mentioned in many blog discussions that many of our sistas exhibit hostility and suspicion towards anyone who doesn't share their viewpoints. This mindset has fostered an acceptance of cultural-ignorance and political infancy. Since black women represent only about 8% to 9% of the population, it will be disasterous if we refuse to adopt strategies that allow us to access as many spheres of influence as possible. In many cases, I have noticed that we routinely dismiss potential allies based on unexamined narrow-mindedness and an unwillingness to engage with integrity.

Clinging to blanket assumptions while pretending to seek honest dialogue reflects a lack of integrity. Fueling mentalities of suspicion with complete strangers (based on what you think they represent) relects a lack of integrity.

What are the best methods that we can implement in the political arena?

Let's begin with self-examination. What are your initial reactions when encountering blacks who do not support the Obama administration?

Should black people extend blanket solidarity to every black political candidate who mentions Martin Luther King and claims to embrace "The Dream"?

Should black people grant unearned loyalty to Barack Obama because he's a half-black person?

Should Barack Obama receive a different standard of evaluation among blacks because he's a half-black person?

Do most of the black people you know apply the same type of scrutiny with Barack Obama that is given to Clarence Thomas?

Deneen Borelli mentioned on Glenn Beck's show on Friday that Obama is pushing "plantation politics". There are many black people I know in my church who would refuse to listen to anyone who presented that view. They become irate and irrational if any criticism of Barack is expressed.

I believe that many black people in the lower class tier and in the lower middle class tier were eager to idolize the Obamas because they have never been exposed to black people who are high achievers. Without any personal exposure to high profile blacks, they believed that Barack and Michelle were of the highest caliber. They began to interpret the Obamas through the lens of symbolism. This pattern is extremely dangerous for black people to reinforce - but most don't see the danger.

When Barack introduced himself to the American public, his background wasn't more exceptional than the majority of the black men whom I had been exposed to since childhood. Blacks who aren't fawning over Barack Obama have seen plenty of Barack Obamas and have been exposed to numerous blacks who represented an even higher standard.

If you tour the blogosphere regularly, you will encounter many blacks who believe that Obama's policies should not be scrutinized or that Obama's character or decisions can never be criticized. I coined a term for that mentality: the "Obama-ssiah" mentality.

A few months ago, Bill Berkowitz' article "Black Conservatives in the Age of Obama" presented the observation that "In African American communities, black conservatives are viewed as outsiders...with little to no political following. Their longtime opposition to affirmative action, minimum-wage laws, social welfare programs, and their support for privatization, deregulation, a host of Christian conservative "culture war" issues, and so-called muscular foreign-policy initiatives, have put them at odds with the majority of African Americans."

One example of the open hostility towards black Republicans is the article, "Some of My Best Friends Are Uncle Toms". Average Bro had a blog discussion in April "Are You Actually A Black Republican?" There was a blog discussion where all of the typical characterizations about Republicans were tossed in.

The mentality that the conservative platform is a "white supremacist" platform is ridiculous. There are plenty of black conservatives who embrace ideologies that white conservatives may not validate at all. "Black Conservative Town Hall Meeting On Glenn Beck's Show: Bookerista Response, Part 2" is a discussion that should be read by those who are visiting this forum.

Yvonne Davis is a former national co-chair for African Americans for Bush and a former appointee in the Bush Administration. I don't think that many black liberals are familiar with her. Black women who are interested in developing effective political strategy will have to identify blacks who are the opinion leaders in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party, and not merely pay attention to the latest mouthpiece that has gained the attention of the political pundits.

Many black people have said to me "the Republican Party is not acting in the best interests of black people so how can any blacks support them? The main reason why that question is so astonishingly ignorant is because of the underlying assumption that one set of issues can be defined as "black interests".

In the post "We Are Not Equals!", I mentioned that most black women have not dismantled the expectation that we are all products of the same cultural foundations, that we all are on the same tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and that we all have the same battles to fight. We aren't. And we don't.

Public policies that may benefit a welfare mother in Cabrini Green Housing Project may not elevate my life at all. My political priorities may not anything to do with hers. When I attend community forums with activists in all-black neighborhoods, the issues that the residents are discussing are not issues that exist in my neighborhood. My neighbors don't complain about police conduct. In fact, I have never heard a police siren on my street or in my neighborhood. None of the homes have steel bars installed on the windows. None of the homes have iron bars covering their front doors. If I walk down the street and can hear loud music coming from a passing car, I know they don't live in our area. There is never trash strewn in the streets or on the sidewalk. I can read a book on the porch and barely hear any noise down the street. My neighbors don't complain about unfair police enforcement of teenage curfews. The police don't need to enforce curfews for teens because parents control their own children where I live. In the area I live in, store owners don't post rude signs demanding that passerby do not to stand in front of their stores, or posting signs with "We call police!" threats.

The local political landscape may be very different for me than it will be for another black person whose daily life does not resemble mine. My decisions about who should be the next mayor may be very different than hers. I don't care if the politicians I elect don't represent everyone's views. I vote them in to address my views.

I don't represent Shantaquetta Tomeka Washington at the political bargaining table. My vote reflects my decisions about the leader who represent my political priorities. She should choose the leaders who represent hers. My vote belongs to me. Many black women believe that their vote should represent the desires of the black community. I am not one of them.

I find that many blacks still believe that BlackThinkTM is a necessary tool of collective advancement. White people have significant representation in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. This is not true for black people. Should we care? If the highest concentrations of blacks are in the Democratic Party, where is the political clout of blacks when we have a Republican president? If we want influence across-board then we will need strong representation in every political party. Why don't more black women grasp that?

As long as black people continue to associate the Democratic Party with race loyalty, black people will continue to devalue their political leverage. In David Swerdlick's article "Are Black Republicans Obsolete?", he posed a question: "What, exactly, is so admirable about the instinct to put as much distance as possible between yourself and your community? These types of persons typically create a mental association netween affiliation with Democratic Party and black allegiance.

We must be willing to carefully examine the sophisticated mechanisms of class tier protection that exist in this country's political landscape. Many black people in the churches I have been in are still waiting for America to adopt an egalitarian infrastructure. Whenever the focus of black people remains fixed on the magical appearance of an unlikely factor - such as egalitarianism - our political preparation for the existing landscape will remain pathetically insufficient.

Stage three of the path of self-actualization is: Diversify!

Effective diversification strategies will require a willingness to forge alliances based on ideological intersection - not ideological conformity.

I have been at the discussion table with white racists who were adamant about addressing police corruption. They were not at the table to fight against racial injustice. Their battle was a battle that I found necessary. This doesn't mean that there aren't other battles to be fought. Being at the same table fighting for one battle doesn't mean that we have to be automatic allies. Many black women don't seem to grasp that, and this is why their power bases tend to be so narrowly-defined.

May I give an example? There was a time in this country when black men were sent to fight for their country when the country they were fighting for refused to give them the same liberties as white men. Black men were willing to kill the enemies of this country while fighting on the same side as those who were not their allies.

In the political landscape, divested black women will find that they can fight the same battle with those who are not their allies without placing themselves in a position of having less dominance.

There are black Democrats that insist that the Republican Party is full of racists. I suppose they don't read much. Senator Robert Byrd is a "former" KKK member and the longest sitting congressmen in history. He's a Democrat. There are bold racists in both camps! Any Democrat who claims that there aren't any racists, misogynists or class bigots in the Democratic Party is lying.

How many black women who are Democrats have even read Michael Steele's blog? Instead, they decide to allow the media to interpret the views of black political leaders and assume that the pundits' synopsis of Michael Steele's opinions is always correct?

How many black women who are Democrats have studied black GOP history?

How many black Democrats who are women have spent time researching The Black Republican Forum or Republicans For Black Empowerment?

I want to encourage our sistas to step up our game if we intend to be taken seriously in the political arena.

There were black people on the show speaking about The Tea Party Movement and there are many blacks who think that there isn't any black support for that movement. Unfortunately, Glenn Beck's show did not present an analysis of all of the variations of the black conservative platform.

If the black conservative platform is going to be constructively analyzed by black people then the "popular" blanket assumptions have to be deconstructed, and the distortions have to be boldly confronted.

(GUEST COLUMN FROM A BLACK MALE PERSPECTIVE) From Then to Now: We Hold the Keys to the Advancement of African American Males

Black Women, Blow The Trumpet! is honored to present its third guest columnist for 2009 and its second male columnist since the launch of this think tank. While this forum exists to elevate the voices of black women and to place the issues that matter to many of us at the forefront - without any interference from those who are not actively supporting the collective advancement of black women - I believe that black men have a voice that must be heard also.

Max Reddick is the host of the blog soulbrother v.2, and he offered a guest column at my invitation. I sent him a note on Facebook and shared the skeletal blueprint of the Black Male Annihilation Formula:
Systematic Incarceration+Institutionally-Sponsored Extermination+Long-term Self-Deterioration/Destruction+ Sustained Rates of Black Abortions+ Declining Rates of Black Male Educational Capital+(Voluntary and Compulsory) Exclusion From Societal Mainstream+A Fatal Epidemic+Legislative Reinforcement= Inevitable Annihilation

I presented this equation in the post, "Questions and Answers From A Black Woman's Perspective", and asked Max if he had perspectives to share with us about it.

The new blog guests can find a sampling of the group discussions that we have had about black men on the sidebar under the picture of the black man who is looking ahead. The first male columnist in this forum was Rutherford Lawson, and he shared a column with us in November 2008 to discuss my post, "Who's In Charge? The Mantle of Black Leadership".

I am so pleased to present Max Reddick. A husband, father and cyber activist, Max is one of ten black male bloggers who have been invited in 2009 to present guest columns at this think tank and one of three who accepted the invitation. Ladies, please join me in welcoming another thinking black man to the table!
____________________________________________________________________________

From Then to Now: We Hold the Keys to the Advancement of African American Males
By Max Reddick

For some time now, the general consensus has been that African American males are in a state of crisis. For some time now, alarms have come from all quarters warning of the inevitable demise of African American males.

But what if I were to say that despite all the evidence to the contrary, this prognosis is untrue? Would you believe me? Could I convince you otherwise? Could I convince you that perhaps crisis is desirable because it is at that point of crisis, at the crucial juncture, that we must decide if we possess the will, the fortitude to do that which needs to be done? Could I quell your fears of inevitable demise, of annihilation, if I could show you that since around the beginning of the twentieth century, racists have been predicting, and perhaps wishing for, the ultimate demise and annihilation of people of color altogether?

But do not believe for one moment that I do not recognize that African American males are in trouble. Do not think that I do not recognize that African American males lead the nation in perhaps every negative indicator. Do not think that I do not cringe when I see the negative images of African American males as they are paraded past on the evening news and as they are presented to the nation in almost every conceivable form of media.

However, before I begin this discussion in earnest, allow me, please, to ask you a question. What role do you see African American males playing in American society and culture? What is our place in American society and culture?

Perhaps, you cannot think of a role, a place, right off. And perhaps if you can, that role, that place, can only be described in negative terms. And that presents the greatest problem, the greatest urgency; African American males are without a definable role or place within American culture.

They—we—exist in an arid zone of non-being, a naked declivity that renders us all but invisible to the society and culture at large. We exist only as bodies, as a an alien threat that must be controlled.

But allow me to go back. Allow me to provide a historical context to my argument. Usually, I begin to lose people at this point. Usually, when I attempt to evoke the institution of slavery and its concomitant program of planned and systematic dehumanization, people begin to shake their head in disagreement. After all, how could something that occurred so long ago affect us even now?

But consider this: only fairly recently were African Americans allowed any semblance of full participation in American society and culture. The American Civil Rights Movement occurred within my lifetime although I was far too young to be cognizant of it. So, in the one hundred years or so since the end of the institution of slavery, the assumptions and attitudes subtending slavery continued unabated.

And for about one hundred years even before the advent of the slave trade, power and science colluded in providing evidence of the innate inferiority and inhumanity of persons of color, and this process continued and was refined in the two hundred or so years of the existence of the institution of slavery. So, can we really assume that attitudes and assumptions four hundred years in developing and practice could be undone in the forty or so years since the Civil Rights Movement? However, before the institution of slavery what both African women and men had was a well-defined role or place in whatever society they participated in. Whether that society was matriarchal or patriarchal, that role or place was known and, most importantly, passed from generation to generation by elders and others who served as repositories of the culture. And by participation in that society or culture, African women and men held value as participating and contributing members.

But in the travail of the middle passage, those roles were lost and the value of those persons shifted from being participating and contributing members of a society and culture to being counted as beasts in the field. They were valued not as persons but as assets, and as such they became locked into their bodies.

And with the dissolution of the institution of slavery, they attempted to reinvent themselves as Americans. They attempted to insert themselves into the society and culture at large, and in doing so, they selected the roles and places as modeled by their masters and mistresses as a paradigm of being, of existing, of conducting themselves. However, the conscriptions of discrimination and a Jim Crow culture prevented them from attaining that model. As an aside, most Americans, even white Americans, have been unable to achieve this ideal.

And as psychologists and sociologists have frequented noted, in the absence of traditional avenues to success, to personal fulfillment, people will often turn to alternate, sometimes illegitimate paths. In the absence of access to legitimate means of achieving financial success, people will turn to alternate, illicit means such as crime or dealing drugs. In the absence of legitimate means of validating one’s manhood, people will turn to alternate means. People will turn to violence and fathering illegitimate children all in an effort to simply prove to the world that they are indeed men.

In fact, if you examine the various manifestations of African American manhood and masculinity closely, you would find that these manifestations often closely parallel those mainstream paradigms of manhood and masculinity though greatly exaggerated. In addition, many studies have shown that those traits and intuitions that allow one to successfully negotiate and survive the culture of the streets are the same traits and intuitions possessed by top business professionals and Fortune 500 CEOs. However, in the absence of alternate paradigms of manhood and shut out of the mainstream, these same traits and intuitions when directed toward criminal enterprise and other illicit pursuits become a detriment.

But African American males have proven resilient. African Americans have proven resilient. The fact is that even as the negative indicators pile up, even as the educational system seemingly fails our boys, even as more African American males fall victim to senseless violence, even as more African American males languish behind bars, there are African American males who are realizing their own measure of success. There are African American males who are finding success by defining success in their own terms.

The answer to the problems lie in African American males defining ourselves and our accomplishments for ourselves and not in comparison to some ideal the proves unattainable even by those championing it and promulgating it the most. We must develop and deploy our own alternate notions of manhood and success. It goes without saying that we must accept African American females as equal partners in solving those problems that continue to plague the African American community. And most of all, we reanimate those networks that will allow as to pass that generational knowledge of roles, of place, of conduct from one generation to the next.

And allow me to close with this dictum from psychologist Vytgosky: What is learned must necessarily be taught. Perhaps memory is what is missing from this picture. Those of us who have seemingly made it, those of us who have seemingly transcended the poverty and privation of our upbringing seem to have forgotten that we did not do it by ourselves. Even as I look back over my journey from then to now, I must acknowledge that one the way there were individuals, both male and female, who took me aside, who taught me, who nurtured me, who inspired me.

For those children caught in the maddening and perpetual cycle of poverty, it becomes imperative that instead of us shaking our head, instead of us pointing fingers in blame and criticizing, we leave the comfort of our corporate and university offices to teach, to nurture, to inspire. We are both the problem and the solution; we hold the key to our uplift and continuance or our ultimate demise.

BLACK LOVE REVISITED: LOVE FOR THE GROUP VERSUS LOVE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL

Black love.

We hear that term often in the blogosphere. There are many appeals made by black people for blacks to demonstrate "black love".

What does it mean? What does it require of us?
What are the conditions that are being validated?
How are black women enforcing those conditions?
How/when have black women benefited from enforcing those conditions?

Do we want to examine the "black love" platform and decide which segment of the black race is benefiting from it most?

Are black women the recipients of black love?

Walk into any all-black ghetto and look around for about an hour or two and observe who is engaging with black women and how they are engaging with black women.

Is black love elevated as a platform that obligates black women to give more of their emotional resources when they are not currently beneficiaries of a collective investment from any segment of the black race?

White love. We see the messages of "white love" in every type of communication that we encounter daily. Only white supremacists would dare to verbalize their white love. When we hear white people saying, "we need to promote more love for the white race! We need to protect our pride in the white race!" it is highly likely that we will assign those statements to white supremacist groups.

When we hear black people saying "we need to promote more love for the black race! We need to protect our pride in the black race!", we don't assign those statements to black extremist groups at all.

There is one dynamic that I have noticed whenever I initiate discussions about self-accountability and collective accountability. It has been puzzling for me to encounter black women who do not know how to process or interpret the actions of a group differently than they process or interpret the actions of individuals who belong to that group. I believe that this conditioning was validated and reinforced in slavery by the Africans. The white slave owner was assigned a set of characteristics based on his actions. Those characteristics were then assigned to all members of the white race.

Black men are assigned a set of characteristics in mainstream society. You may recall that last year, ABC News conducted an experiment and had two black teens pretend to be asleep in a car in a park. Nearby they had a group of white teens vandalizing a car in a predominantly white suburb. In the video, the white male teens were committing a crime for three hours (in daylight) and many white people passing by do not call 911. In the same video, white people started calling 911 when seeing black male teens sleeping in a car - feeling that there could be danger.

Racial profiling is real.
Class profiling is real.

What happens when black people make national headlines and are guilty of the crime that they are accused of? Does black love require that we all pretend that a crime was not committed when a black criminal receives punishment?

On numerous occasions, I have noticed that black peoplea are usually encouraged by other blacks to focus on the type of punishment received and to avoid the discussion about the actions of the accused.

If you are a black person who commits a crime and gets caught, you can expect to be treated like a criminal in the criminal justice system. This seems to be quite simple, yet it seems that plenty of black people express outrage and indignation when a black person who commits a crime is treated like a criminal!

I read a lot of blog discussions about the news headlines that involve black people. More often than not, I notice that there are black people who are attempting to focus more on the racism and classism in the criminal justice system than the acceptance of criminality among our own people.

When people were discussing the Heather Ellis case, I heard comments such as:
"All she did was kick the police officer!"
"All she did was use profanity with the police officer!"
"All she did was to scream at the police!"
"All she did was to demand her correct change before leaving the store!"

Is that all? The response from many blacks was to trivialize Heather's actions while ranting about the consequences that she faced.

When Oscar Grant was in the national news after being murdered on the platform of a train station, I heard comments such as:
"He wasn't resisting arrest!"
"He wasn't arguing with police!"

Oscar Grant was a career criminal, and a ghetto thug, who was fighting on a train (which means he was exhibiting animalistic behavior). He was not sitting quietly in his seat while traveling - as a responsible adult would be. Consequently, the police arrived on the scene with the expectation that they would face animalistic behavior. If I am a police officer and I receive a report that a person is exhibiting violent, animalistic behavior, it's not racist for me to arrive on the scene expecting to confront a certain type of mentality.

Suddenly there were black bloggers who were attempting to focus on the murder of Oscar Grant but not on his criminal history. No one focused on the criminal behavior exhibited by Oscar on the train that resulted in a call to police.

Black love!

A black girl at Harvard admitted that she knew the accused murderer who came to the campus for a drug deal. She screamed racism when she was thrown off campus under a cloud of suspicion. We were all supposed to share in her outrage.

Black love!

If a group of black boys are fighting and they are punished for their behavior, we are supposed to ignore their behavior and focus on the type of punishment they received in relation to the punishment given to white boys who were engaged in the same behavior. We didn't discuss why violence seemed to be the route these boys chose to take to resolve conflict. We didn't ask why there were black mothers standing behind the microphone complaining about the treatment given to their sons - but not black fathers. We were too busy focusing on the punishment that was given to them.

Black love!

Who is benefiting the most when black women do not focus on the accountability of the individual? Who is benefiting when black women begin to identify with the individual in a way that justifies their refusal to enforce accountability?

I was visiting a blog where unwed mothers were discussing the reasons why they do not report their children's fathers for unpaid child support. They were saying that it doesn't benefit their child for their child's father to be placed behind bars for not financially providing for them. They mentioned that black men were being targeted for unpaid child support more than white fathers were. (I've seen no research to support that claim.)

The "black rule" is: If the process of enforcing accountability has been unfairly implemented by white people, then blacks should not enforce any self-accountability.

The reason why so many black women are willing to validate this "black rule" is because they have been conditioned to see themselves as marginalized, as mistreated, and as exploited. Whenever another black person is treated unfairly, it seems to trigger an alarm that causes them to identify with the unfairness that person was subjected to more than it allows them to examine the accountability of the individual for facing consequences for his/her actions.

I want to encourage us to examine the high costs of perpetuating that mentality.

This mentality causes many black women to contribute to the unsafe environment in black constructs that are populated by blacks in the lower-class tier. They contribute to it by producing explanations for not addressing criminality and not reporting rape and battery and street harassment to the police. They contribute to it by minimizing the actions of those who face police punishment.

"The police stopped my son for walking down the street!" a lady in church complained. (Her son was arrested for possession of crack. She didn't want to tell that part of the story. She wanted everyone to feel outraged so she highlighted injustice in order to make sure that everyone would react emotionally.)

"What was he arrested for?" I asked.
"He was just walking to the store!" she snapped.
"What was he arrested for?" I asked again.
"They can't just stop our boys on the street just for being black! My son is in the church!" she huffed.
"You don't want to mention what he was arrested for?" I pressed.
"They said he had drugs!" she responded.

With that retort, she was trying to introduce the suspicion that her son was framed by police, that he was a church boy who was randomly targeted by police. Since I had ministered to many who were in the drug trade, I wasn't as easily convinced as everyone else who listened to her story.

There were other black mothers who were quick to offer sympathy and to verbalize our duty to support our children. She had the gall to say that the church needed to set up a legal defense fund "and call in Jesse!" I was floored. We should create a legal defense fund to assist parents whose children are at the mercy of the criminal justice system - when their own irresponsible behavior got them there?

The ploy to spread false information about a case in order to fuel outrage among blacks is used very often by blacks. We saw this ploy quite often in the Heather Ellis case: "She faces prison for cutting in a line!" countless black bloggers falsely reported.

Black love!

If there is a clear-cut case of racism with irrefutable evidence, then there would be no need to distort any facts of the case to rally black support. Using deception, distortion or emotional manipulation in order to provoke emotional reactions among blacks is not a new technique, but it is a ploy that black women need to stop validating and excusing.

Does black love require that we remain silent and compliant when emotional manipulation, embellishment and distortion is used by community advocates and bloggers in order to generate black outrage?

Does black love require that we refuse to ask objective questions when a black person is in the national headlines in a criminal case?

It seems that if one person from one group makes a comment, that there are scores of black people who decide that everyone who is a member of that group adopts that same thinking.

This type of mentality is usually labeled "pattern-recognition". I have mentioned in other discussions that prior experiences with individuals of one particular group do not validate bigoted assumptions that apply to everyone in the group. The mentality of "pattern recognition" is validated by many black people in black constructs.

While plenty of black women are surprised to learn that I am not a feminist, I've been in discussions with many black people who were floored to find out that I am a Republican. Someone recently said to me, "I can't believe any black person would support Sarah Palin! I can't believe any black person would support Rush!"

I said I was a Republican. Who said I supported Sarah Palin? Who said I supported Rush? This person clearly assumed that because I belonged to the Republican Party that I supported everyone who was a member. I would like to say that those types of blanket assumptions are exceedingly rare among our people - but they aren't.

I am sure that if Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice and I met for lunch to discuss our political views, we would not share the same views on every issue that the Republican Party has included in its platform. We don't have to!

I've met many black women who think that affiliation with a group requires a set of beliefs that all must share. This mentality is closely intertwined with the "black love" imperative. The "black love" imperative requires that black people demonstrate collective support for every member of the group. There is no distinction made between those who are worthy of collective loyalty and support and those who are not. It is this absence of distinction that produces an obligation that is detrimental to black progress.

I mentioned this when I discussed the article by Jade Norwood when she mentions BlackThinkTM. I mentioned this when I discussed "The 25 Most Erroneous Assumptions About Black Women". This mentality has a high cost for black women, and correlates to the "black love" mandate.

Scores of black women internalize this belief: If I don't stand for the same things that you stand for, then I am not embracing black love. Their desire to be seen as loyalists causes them to ignore the accountability imperative. Ignoring the accountability imperative negatively impacts their credibility outside of black constructs.

How many times have we seen fundraising campaigns set up for those who were guilty of the crimes they were being charged with? I am wondering why it seems that so many of our people will treat the guilty and the innocent in the same way - just because they're black and in the criminal justice system.

I still enounter many black women who are trapped in the mindset of assigning a set of beliefs and a set of characteristics to every individual who belongs to a group.

These women often explain to me that their views of black men are based on their personal experiences with them. When I tell them that their experiences do not define all black women's experiences, they are often defensive and upset. If their experiences are not attached to the entire group and placed in the center of the group's definition, then they feel that their experiences have been delegitimized.

When the black divestment discussion focused on the defection of black women from exploitative constructs where they were being fortify their own subjugation - in the name of "black love" - there were black women who felt conflicted.

"I support many black men in my life!" they said. So do I. My loyalty to my father or to my brother or to my uncles or to my cousins or to my male friends does not transfer to black men as a group.

I believe in reciprocal loyalty. Divested black women realize that black men as a group do not receive the same type of allegiance as rhe black men who have made an investment in them and in their lives. Divested black women are able to see the difference. When I walk down the street, I don't confuse a random black man with my own father or with the other black men in my life. The random black man that I pass by on the street is not a symbol of the black men men I love. Many black women have been taught to validate manufactured symbolism.

Black men benefit greatly when black women process their allegiances based on manufactured symbolism. Repeatedly, black women are being told by black demagogues that the boy in handcuffs on the evening news could be their son!

"Next time, it could be your child!" they are told. It's a fear tactic that seems to work with many black women. This is how black women are coerced into validating black unity.

I will make decisions about those black people who are vetted that I will not make for those who are not. The t-shirts that say: "I am Sean Bell!" promote this expectation that all blacks must take collective ownership for the experiences of individual blacks. We never saw white women wearing "I am Susan Smith!" t-shirts when Susan Smith was being portrayed in the national headlines as a victim who had her children and car stolen from her by a black man. (The nation quickly learned that she was a murderer.)

Whenever a black person makes headlines and is portrayed as a victim by black demagogues, suddenly all blacks are supposed to scream "I am _______!"

I am not Precious Jones. Her experience is not my experience.

The black love imperative says that her experience has to be my experience if I claim that I love my people.

It's time for black women to unpack that expectation. We do not have to own each other's personal history. We do not have to own each other's personal experiences.

It's time to redefine black love - and take the yoke from around our necks.

BLACK DIVESTMENT AND THE MASTER'S TOOLBOX

I was reading an article by critical race theorist, Zanita Fenton, "The Paradox of Hierarchy - Or Why We Always Choose The Tools of The Master's House" and I wanted to share it with those of you who are interested in examining dominance strategy in the context of black women's empowerment.

First of all, I don't agree that we always choose the master's tools.

It's problematic that whenever we talk about our strategies, that someone always interjects this preposterous notion that we are seeking to use "white people's strategies". There are many black women I've encountered online who think that anytime the word "dominance theory" is mentioned, that it means we are adopting "the white man's strategies". There is an outlandish assumption that dominance is a "foreign" concept to black people around the world and that the black slave learned the mechanisms of dominance from the white slave owner. This assumption is rooted in a (ridiculous) belief that caste systems were non-existent in Africa. It is believed that the African was introduced to the infrastructures of oppression by the white man.

Perhaps they believe that anything that black women have utilized for their own advancement must consist of something that we have stolen from "the white man's toolbox".

The notion that any type of self-actualization strategy that black women adopt is an imitation of "the white man's" dominance strategy is outlandish - and demeaning. I have encountered this mentality quite often among our people. This assumption dismisses the intellectual capital that is leveraged by black women. We are fully capable of developing our own ideologies. The assumption that we're either borrowing or stealing the tools that we wield is disturbing. Whenever I encounter black women who bring that assumption into this forum, I usually dismiss them because that mentality seems too convoluted and too puzzling for me to unpack.

When I began introducing stage four of the path of self-actualization of black women, I noticed that many black women came into the dominance theory dialogue with an expectation that we were seeking to validate "the white man's" tool box.

The white man" doesn't own every toolbox. Strategic advancement in the global arena requires more than one set of tools. The same tools that are leveraged by white people in America will not work for black women in America. We do not have a parallel existence and we do not (and should not) navigate the race landscape, or the class landscape, or the gender landscape using the same methods.

This forum intends to identify the array of unused and unsharpened tools that are available to black women who are seeking to apply dominance strategies in the global arena.

A few academics who understand the foundations of dominance theory have sent notes to me stating that I am "rewriting" dominance theory at my own forum. Perhaps I am. Is that a problem? Do I need a permission slip from white people to do so?

Should I stay within the framework that other races have constructed to evaluate the application of dominance strategy? Who says that I have to? Who says that black women have to? I am entitled to take one tool and reshape it into another. I examine tools of oppression and I decide if I can reshape those tools for other purposes.

I spoke with a womanist scholar online a few months ago who asked me to write about the intersectionality of womanist theory and dominance theory. I told her that it would require a dissertation - not a blog post! I welcome a guest column from any womanists who want to share their perspectives about how womanists interpret the black divestment imperative. Since I am not a womanist, I have refrained from making any statements in my discussions about how womanists should apply the strategies that we are identifying as a group.

As the email discussion that I was having with this inquisitive womanist prof was replayed in my mind over the span of several days, I began to think about the ideological intersections of the critical race feminist and the divested black woman. I thought about the platforms of the black woman who becomes a dominance strategist and about the foundations of a liberationist who has womanist methodologies. It is incredibly exciting for me that so many new connections are being formed on Facebook because I believe this forum will move in an entirely different direction in 2010 with a different mix of ideologies that are introduced by new participants.

Over the summer, I began to think about the change in direction that was needed for this forum. I believed that I had spent far too much time giving too much attention to those black women who entered this arena who had no intentions of committing to inner work or committing to the examination of dynamics in which we recognized that BlackThinkTM had marginalized several generations of black women.

In 2008, we had many discussions where we were identifying the requirements of stage one of the path of self-actualization. In 2009, we started having more discussions about the requirements of stage two of the path of self-actualization and the blogosphere was "abuzz" about my elevation of the black divestment imperative. I also began to focus on stage three of the path of self-actualization because I realized that there were many black women who had successfully moved through stage one and stage two.

In order for us to discuss dominance strategy in a way that will be palatable to the newly-emancipated sistas, we have to fully understand how they have been conditioned to view dominance. We have to deconstruct their fears about validating dominance. We have to examine their mental associations that link dominance and oppression because many black women whom I've engaged with do not seem to interpret dominance apart from subjugation. They have been taught to believe that we have a moral imperative to eradicate inequality. I believe it is preposterous to accept accountability for eradicating the infrastructure that will not be dismantled without any participation of its deconstruction by those who fortified it in the first place.

While Dr. Fenton evaluates "the master's tools" differently than I do, I agree with her view of the dominance landscape. She writes, "I recognize how the structures of power...will support the status quo. This inertial force is the paradox of hierarchy. The paradox of hierarchy is that it strives to affirm itself..." She goes further to say that "the indicia of success (or the markers for equality, as the case may be) are established through the structures of power."

She asserts that "...the elimination of hierarchy is nearly impossible". I agree with this observation. This reckoning is necessary for the divested black woman. I believe that the decision to refuse to accept the existence of inequality is a dangerous one. Accepting inequality does not require perpetuating inequality. It requires that we remove the blinders of an imaginary utopia as we navigate channels of power.

In the post "White Patriarchy Without All The Mess", I mentioned that Oprah's dominance strategy was not to dismantle the channels of power, and it was not to fight against those who fostered the infrastructure of inequality, buther strategy consisted of working within those power channels. Her goal was to redirect the power amassed by the power brokers to herself. Ultimately, she maneuvered well enough to claim a portion of the power for herself and to create an entirely new power base that outgrew the power base of those who had given her access.

She implemented this strategy under the radar and so that she would not be deemed a threat by those who had the power to shut her out entirely before her power base was fortified by manufactured dependencies. Oprah didn't try to dismantle "the master's house". She walked into the house as an employee of the house. She left "the master's house" intact when she began building her own house and did not seek to dismantle it.

I've seen too many black people operating with the mentality that in order to acquire something for themselves, they need to take apart what someone else has because what someone else has is an obstacle for them to attain what they desire. I believe this mentality is dysfunctional for black women who seek dominance in a global arena and it will not reap collective gains for black women.

In the discussion "We Are Not Equals!", I mentioned that I don't believe it is necessary that we embrace egalitarianism. I am not threatened by those who know how to increase the value of their levers of privilege.

I've seen numerous black women step into an arena where they have no tangible power at all, trying to tell those who control the power channels what they will and will not accept. Some of these ladies are demanding equality without realizing that equality is bartered. There is nothing in our nation's history that should lead black people to believe that equality has no price tag and no requirements. Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand" but I say that "a demand is not taken seriously at the negotiating table when you have nothing to wield that those in power want to acquire."

I have mentioned to black women in this forum that it is important that we understand the types of capital that we can acquire and that we identify the types of capital that we already possess. Often, we show up at the negotiating table listening to others act as if they are being gracious when they appraise our blue diamonds as if we are holding cubic zirconia. From where I sit, our outrage should not be directed at those who have done so brazenly - but at those who show up at the table failing to recognize that we were not bartering cubic zirconia.

I have already mentioned that the appraisal of various types of capital will differ in different constructs so we need to understand the different systems of valuation of capital that currently exist. Without that knowledge, we can't issue a demand - and be taken seriously.

Dr. Fenton writes, "Only those who have achieved (or embody) hierarchical success have the power to change its contours but these are the individuals with the greatest interest in maintaining the structures that ensure their success..."

Dr. Fenton mentions that there are two options - burn the house down or remodel the house from within. I believe there are three options - construct another house entirely (as Oprah did). Dr. Fenton admonishes that "the master's tools will not give us a new place to live." Oprah is an example of one who didn't need to use the master's tools to build her own house, she used the master's materials to produce new materials that she controlled, and she brought her own toolbox into the master's house (disguised, of course, as a lunch box).

Dr. Fenton made an observation that I have attempted to reinforce in this forum: "Make no mistake: No hierarchical structure exists on its own; each contributes to and affirms the others."

Dr. Fenton offers two suggestions for breaking the paradox:
1. "Always look beyond what you are handed and the expectable. Read between the lines. Be clear on the consequences for all."

While I don't believe that we have to change our methods based on the consequences for all, I do believe that we need to be mindful of what the consequences are and how it will impact us in the future.

2. "When you find yourself at the top of the pyramid, when you have power in a given situation, this is the most important time to challenge structures of hierarchy."

I don't believe that black women have to challenge the structures of hierarchy in all cases. I think it depends on the dominance strategy that we have implemented. There have been cases when I haven't challenged them - as part of my strategy.

The notion that the acquisition of power carries a mandate to open channels of power for those who do not have access to them - seems to only exist in the minds of marginalized people. The assumption that black women in power have to create inroads for other black people or other black women is preposterous. They don't have to share the power they have acquired with other blacks. It would be nice. They aren't obligated to do so.

This seems to be distressing to many black women who believe that they are owed some types of access to blacks in positions of power. I hope that those black women will read the discussions "Black Divestment and Condoleezzation" and "Dismantling The Mentality of Entitlement" and "We Are Not Equals!".

One blog guest said to me in a note, "I am always being misunderstood when I try to share my view in your forum" and I replied, "I don't think you are misunderstood at all. I believe that you assume that we speak the same language - when we don't."

I've mentioned in prior discussions that the assumption among black women that we all have similar experiences as black women in this country, or that we should strive to minimize our cultural, ethnic or class differences fortifies BlackThinkTM - and devalues the mosaic that black women represent. We have different ideologies and different visions of self-actualization.

There are black women who were frustrated in exchanges with me at this forum and stormed off - without examining their incorrect assumptions. They believed that they had identified the foundational assumptions that inform my ideologies. I would listen to their assumptions and I would shake my head in bewilderment. My tool box may not have the same contents as your tool box. Even if some of the tools appear to be the same, I may be utilizing those tools for different purposes. A crow bar can be used to force access - but it can also be used as a weapon.

How often have black women been surprised because they assumed that the tools in someone else's tool box would not be used as a weapon against us? How often have black women entered the class landscape without all of the necessary tools in their tool boxes - while believing that others should share?

While there is an expectation that we all should create tools for other black women to use, I think we should be cautious about doing so. Those who are using tools that they have not been properly trained to use are dangerous. Some of our sistas will only see as far as their conditioning allows them to. It will benefit all of us to be more observant about the conditioning that informs the ideologies that we encounter.

Many women in this forum are immersed in discussions on empowerment strategies that a large segment of our sistas can not even see. They don't believe that strategic dominance is even possible for black women. Who is ultimately responsible for what they can and can't see? Their vision of their own self-actualization directly impacts the tools that they will use, and it impacts the tools that they will create.

As individuals, our self-actualization hinges on our ability to produce the tools that are needed to construct the roads that we travel upon. It also hinges on our ability to navigate the roads that we did not construct.

We don't need to obsess about the tools in the "Master's tool box". We can begin crafting and sharpening our own.

THE FOIBLES OF THE BLACK FEMALE SCAPEGOAT: NOTES FROM THE BENCH

Most of you have watched the reaction of the public whenever a black woman makes national news. It's so predictable.

The white media (also referred to as "MSM" at some blogs) usually operate with a well-defined formula when covering news that involves a black person. Most of us can quickly name the five types of stories that the white media loves to cover when blacks are the central characters.

If we look at the national headlines involving a black woman who was raped, or killed or unjustly arrested, a pattern emerges: a few black male demagogues will usually take center stage and frame the national dialogue around an issue that fortifies their self-appointment as spokesperson for all blacks.

While many black women will say that black men do not take responsibility for advocating for the interests of black women, if we look at the national headlines that involved individual black women in the last five to twenty years, we will see that those black men who cultivate media attention have often been the first ones to "protect" a black woman in crisis.

We don't see the president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. or Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. or The Links, Inc. or Girlfriends, Inc. being interviewed on the national news when a black woman's tragedy has gained the national spotlight. And we won't see that. Are the black sororities and black women's organizations responsible for protecting black women? No.

Should they be responsible for crafting a voice for black women on a national level?

The answer depends on who you ask.

As much as black women love to think that "sisterhood solidarity" is an imperative for all black women, the reality is that our black women's organizations will not the first spokespersons sitting in front of the microphone on CNN or on Dateline when a black woman becomes a national news story.

Let's think of the black women who have recently made the national news - Caster...Megan....Serena, Sarah Kruzan, Heather Ellis...and so many others.

Black male demagogues were the ones who defined the issues, and then controlled and executed the battle plan. Any others who became a part of the equation were auxiliaries. Shouldn't we examine the blueprint of their dominance strategy?

This pattern has emerged so often that whenever the major news outlets want to hear "the black point of view" about a black woman's tragedy, they almost always contact the black male leaders. One reason why these news outlets don't often bring the leaders of national black women's organizations into the national dialogue is because it is widely accepted that black male demogagues can speak for all blacks.

Should we care about that?

How many white people can name the three most high-profile black female activists who influence the national dialogue on issues that matter to the black race? How many black woman can name them? I believe we have identified the crux of our problem.

What role should black women define for themselves so that they are not dependent upon others to tell their story to the nation and to speak for them before the nation?

In the eyes of the white media (and in the eyes of many blacks), the story of one black woman becomes a symbol of the plight of all black women. We can see how politically advantageous it is for a black male demagogue to "rescue" a black woman who is in the national spotlight.

Control her story and you can become the puppetmaster of the entire issue in the national dialogue.

If there is one factor in examining dominance strategies that we have not evaluated closely enough, it is the power dynamics involving the national media. It is quite clear that divested black women must be in control of who defines the issues that matter most to them and how those issues are presented to the mainstream media. What are the most effective methods for black women to undertake?

In order to identify the types of strategies that we would need to implement, we first have to understand how black leaders manipulate public opinion by leveraging media attention. We need to examine how black leaders leverage the media's involvement in "issue headlining news stories" in order to maintain their relevancy in the national dialogue. We have to study that terrain very closely.

Black women have been spectators on the sidelines and have been the mules on the freedom trek to bolster the interests of black men. It has been our choice. During the Civil Rights Movement, black women seemed to extend blind trust to their black male leaders to champion "black" issues that would benefit the collective. We've become so accustomed to seeing black male demagogues on television translating our plight that we don't question why that dynamic is still continuing.

A few weeks ago, we discussed the need for black women to understand how to leverage white patriarchal constructs for their own advantage when I presented the post, "White Patriarchy Without All The Mess". It is clear that black women have not had their hands on the levers of influence in the national dialogue.

Whenever there is a nationally-televised "black" discussion, look at whose faces are behind the microphone.

It is ironic that if you ask white people to name the most influential black leaders in this country, they will start naming those people who most black people don't find credible. They will name the blacks who most of us believe are self-appointed for self-gain.

We recently talked about the need for black women to engage in self-introspection about their interpretation of chivalry when I presented the post "Dismantling The Conspiracy To Invalidate Chivalry". Many of us have heard black women complain that black men (as a group) do not feel obligated to protect black women (as a group). There are many dynamics that have been fostered by black women that have made that a reality. Black male abdication has different catalysts.

Those of us who have examined the dynamics in black constructs and who have examined the conditioning that is reinforced in those constructs have gained an understanding of the accountabilities that black women must assign to themselves when we talk about the obligation of black men (and non-black men) to protect us. In many conversations at this forum, I have insisted that black women accept accountability for the dynamics that they continue to validate that impact our present reality.

If we decide that we will benefit greatly from reinforcing a sense of obligation for our protection, how should black women foster this obligation?

In our discussion on chivalry, I asked: Do black women demonstrate a desire for the protection of black men? The answer is probably no. Do we want non-black men to protect us? The answer is probably no.

If we don't want any protection from male groups, then how are we going to protect ourselves? This issue is directly tied to how we will protect our own agenda.

If we do decide that we want protection and advocacy from male groups, which male groups can be relied upon to fulfill our expectations and not leverage our dependency to elevate their own dominance position?

Since black men are a rapidly dwindling segment of society and are not influential in any sector of mainstream society, I don't think it can be expected that black women would invest their emotional or political resources in seeking the protection of a group that is being annihilated.

As we look at the national dialogue and how it has unfolded, there are a few mistakes that I have noticed that black women tend to make:
1 - Assuming that anyone who offers assistance to us has our best interests at heart.
2 - Assuming that anyone who steps into the role of "rescuer" is doing so with purely altruistic motivations.
3 - Assuming that anyone who speaks out about our victim status is sympathizing with "the plight of black women".
4 - Assuming that anyone who is eager to tell our story or who is positioning themselves at the center of the discussion of our story is an ally.
5 - Assuming that media-saavy black leaders do not have to be vetted when they call us on the phone and tell us that they can get the media involved and that they can raise money.

How many times have we seen a news item concerning a black woman who has been victimized and suddenly people online are collecting money for her? How do we know she has authorized them if she never speaks to the public? How do we know if she even knows them? We don't.

We actually applaud these initiatives and never check into the details to determine if these "fundraisers" are authorized or how the money collected is being accounted for so that the person who is supposedly the victim is not being exploited by all of those who are self-appointed supporters?

Part of the reason why black women have been exploited when we are being "helped" by others is that we don't ask enough questions. When we do ask questions, we tend to ask the wrong people. We also tend to ask those questions out loud (thereby revealing our cards when others have not done so.)

There is a difference between asking questions from a mentality of suspicion and asking questions in order to properly vet prospective allies, organizations and initiatives.

A few weeks ago, news outlets announced an odd twist in the Megan Williams' story. The accused convicts responded to her denial of the events by stating that the incident actually occurred. There are reports that Megan was exploited so that others could gain financially from her ordeal.

There are other cases involving black women facing an injustice or a tragedy where large sums of money were raised adn the person who was supposed to be helped was left with a tiny portion after the cameras left the scene and the news story reached a "conclusion".

Many initiatives that involve victimized black women tug at the heart strings of gullible black women when the puppet masters distort the facts while pasting the "it could be you!" banner over it. The other popular tactic to rally black women's support is "it could be YOUR son!" and "it could be YOUR daughter!"

Everyone knows that scores of black women tend to take one black individual's plight or one black individual's personal history and make that person a symbol in their minds. By supporting the person, they feel that they are attacking the issue itself or that they are championing what that person represents.

Think of the high-profile person who stands before the television cameras with a check for a black woman who is the newest poster child of victimization. We will see the media taking pictures at all of the events to "help" the woman who is often silent during her own ordeal.

If a reporter asks her how much has been raised to help her, she won't even know. If a reporter asks her who is hired as an auditor to oversee all of the fundraising initiatives online, she won't know what initiatives are underway online. So they don't ask her - and we don't seemed disturbed that she's clueless.

The black female scapegoat is often being victimized by the hordes of opportunists surrounding her who offer support. We don't talk about that. If we did, we would have to examine our own culpability, and we would have to take accountability for our collective stance of detachment.

We would have to admit to the reasons why we don't have a proactive strategy to implement.

I mentioned in the recent post "Questions and Answers - From The Black Woman's Perspective" that divested black women have to decide how they will identify and brand themselves. I mentioned that divested black women can't "blend" into the black landscape and remain an obscure segment of Black America.

Divested black women need to identify a strategy quickly - before they are being defined and explained in the white media by those factions that oppose black divestment. This has happened before. Black feminists who did not accept the rules of the black leadership landscape were quickly characterized as lesbians who were anti-black men. The "bitter, angry, anti-black men" label is still being tossed around by black divestment opponents. We saw the tactic used with the black feminists so we can't be surprised.

When the term black divestment was first bandied about at various blog forums, I noticed how quickly we saw black male bloggers attempting to step in and "re-translate" the terminology in order to create distortions about the foundations and methodology of black divestment. This is a common tactic that we have to prepare for.

It's part of the playbook for manipulating public response to gain an upper hand:
1 - Disparage and discredit the messenger. (If the messenger is black, de-black the messenger and toss out "race traitor" and "sell out" labels.)
2 - Distort the positions of the messenger. Use quotes of the messenger and then re-translate them to create deception.
3 - Create diversions in the dialogue to distract those who would hear the messenger.
4 - Attempt to forge an alliance with the messenger and then break ties and start maligning and discrediting the messenger, thereby claiming to have gained "insider" knowledge.

These tactics are so old, they were even used with Jesus! There will always be those persons who are immediately refuting anything that is "brand new" to them. Often, this is a defense mechanism to cover up their ignorance about the ideologies that are being introduced.

One black blogger had a blog show on black divestment - and didn't even read the divestment series at this think tank! I have already mentioned the article in Clutch Magazine that completely distorted the positions at this think tank.

These are just a couple of examples of how quickly other people (and not just black men) will try to misrepresent platforms of black women who present ideologies that they do not understand or are threatened by.

I am using these examples from the blogosphere to explain the dynamics that black women can expect to see whenever black "leaders" who have a platform to protect cultivate media influence as a tool of political leverage.

Whenever someone else defines you to those who believe their interpretation of you, you are automatically placed in the position of defending what has been said rather than proactively outlining your own self-definition. Sistas, there is a clear difference between exhausting time and energy to defend yourself and leveraging resources to define yourself.

Divested black women have not reached a point where they know how to define themselves in the national dialogue on black progress. Moreover, they are still trying to figure out where the black divestment fits into the national dialogue. I've said repeatedly that divestment is only stage two of a four-stage process.

Often, black women think that there can only be one methodology and one platform. They think that they have to endorse one ideology. They think that they have to support a person when they should be focusing on elevating specific ideals.

Messiah representation in the black construct was validated during the "Black Power" movement. BlackThinkTM was reinforced during that era - so all blacks were expected to say the same things, think the same thoughts, and embrace one political platform in order to prove their loyalty to blackness. That era has passed. The divested black woman has replaced the black unity platform with a blueprint for special-interest solidarity.

I was at the Million Man March in 1995. In fact, I was on stage at the Million Man March. During the strategy process for that event, it seemed that black male "leaders" were defining the platform and outlining the issues. This didn't seem dubious to me at all since the focus of the "march" was on black men. When the initiative became national news, black women were given spectator status. When the issue pertains to black men, no one questions why black men are the ones behind the microphone. When the issue pertains to a black woman, no one questions why black women are not the first ones to step behind the microphone.

Those who define the issues usually control the framework in which those issues are being interpreted. This is why black women must begin to identify proactive long-term strategy to steer the national dialogue.

Black women represent 8% to 9% of the population and we far out-number black men in every single major city in the country, yet we don't control the national dialogue when it concerns "black issues". Why complain if you won't master the terrain?

ARE YOU THE NEXT HEATHER ELLIS? AM I?

The blogosphere has been packed with discussions about the Heather Ellis case. She goes to trial on November 18th for a case that opened three years ago. The town only has a 9% black population.

I have received a lot of email from blog guests who were asking me to discuss Heather's case at this forum. I don't have the details of the case - other than the scant details that are available from the two-minute news segment.

Since I grew up in an all-white town filled with "quiet" racists, I am not surprised by any of these types of news reports. My home state has a racist culture in some places, so I am familiar with the tactics that racist white people will use to "send a message" to the black population. I know the traps that racist white people will set in order to cause the police to show up and confront blacks.

My father established some clear boundaries when we moved into that town when I was a child, so I never faced any racial harassment from the residents of the town. In some ways, I think that the town's residents were afraid of my father since we lived close to a larger city where my father wielded a lot of influence.

When I read about the Heather Ellis case, I began thinking about the younger blog audience that visits this forum and how I can instruct them about reducing the possibility of a police altercation when they are in predominately white settings that have racists on the loose. (I am not making any blanket statement that all predominately white towns are racist - or even that most of them are. I will state unapologetically that all towns and cities have some bigots in them - and not all bigots in this society are in the white race.)

As we discuss the predicament that Heather Ellis finds herself in, I want to be clear: I do not believe that facing a possible 15-year prison sentence fits the crime of disorderly conduct or trespassing. I believe that this case was used by those in power to "send a message" to the other blacks in Kennett who make up 9% of the population about what will happen if they step out of line. That's what this is really about.

We all know that the criminal consequences in Heather's case do not fit the crime. Let's choose another angle for our group discussion.

We need to discuss prevention strategies in bigoted environments. We need to identify some steps for those sistas who are reading about Heather's case online so that they can avoid the trap that Heather did not avoid.

Anyone who has regularly visited this blog realizes that this forum does not elevate the "popular" opinions among black people. When we discuss a news story that impacts black women, we are usually examining the issues from the angles that the other blog forums have not focused on.

If we spent our time at this forum discussing how unfair the world is for black people, this forum would be validating a defeatist mentality that fuels a reinforcement of victimhood. Other blogs can take that angle.

This is a self-introspection forum, and that is why we continually ask the question: "What can I change within myself? What can we change within ourselves?" Asking these two questions does not mean that we are minimizing external factors that impact our reality as black women in this country.

At this think tank, we focus on solutions that are internally-driven. For some black women, that task is difficult. It is difficult for those who have been conditioned to believe that the progress of black people depends on the acceptance of white people, and depends on the fairness of white people, and depends on the moral elevation of white people.

I try to tell our sistas that: Whenever you decide that your progress and your elevation depends on other people, you have relinquished your power by not even acknowledging that you have any!" When we begin to speak about our self-actualization in the context of internally-driven priorities and value systems, we are entering foreign terrain for many women who have left this forum.

Heather Ellis is now the latest "poster child" of racial victimization. Plenty of blogs are posting incorrect information about the charges against her: "She was charged with cutting in line". No. She was not charged with that. She was charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer. "She was threatened by the KKK!" No. She was not. News reports indicate that a police officer showed her cards with threats that were printed by the KKK. The officer claimed that he showed them to her so that she would know that those cards existed.

If black bloggers want our blogs to be deemed credible sources of information, then it would be wise to refrain from presenting intentional distortions of the actual facts.

For the teens who may be reading, I want to help. I want mention that if you start using profanity in the presence of a police officer and acting out-of-control, you could be charged with disorderly conduct. It will not be a "trumped up" charge. What one person defines as being "very angry" and another person defines as "out-of-control" can be very different. Whose interpretation of your behavior counts when the police are standing there with guns?

I watched a person get arrested once. The person kept arguing with the police and was handcuffed. The person started using profanity with the police after being handcuffed. The person started making threats to sue and screaming at the bystanders to get their cell phones out. I watched that person become belligerent - while the officers were not doing any taunting at all. I don't even know why that person was arrested - and the reason could have been bogus. The person's behavior escalated the entire situation because as soon as that person jerked away from the officer with combative language and exhibited body language of aggression, the police decided that warranted some "intervention". The person may not have been resisting the arrest but was clearly showing open aggression and hostility.

If a black person exhibits open aggression and hostility with the police (regardless of the reason), that person can expect that the police will respond negatively.

In an interview, Heather's family stated that the police slammed her head on the car. Her relative asked the police what Heather had done. She stated the that police told her that Heather had used profanity. While the use of profanity with authority figures may seem minor to some people, the police can interpret combative language as an act of aggression and defiance.

Let's suppose that you are shopping in a store and you had your items in a basket and you were with a friend who had items in his basket. Both of you were in separate lines. Let's suppose that an employee observes one of you allowing the another person into the line ahead of those customers who were waiting. It's a minor situation. The employee mentions that one person who was waiting in another line (with separate purchases) can not step in front of waiting customers - even if that person has been shopping with a companion.

Since we have some teenagers who visit this blog forum regularly, I'll pose a question:

What are the alternatives for a reasonable adult to choose?
1. A reasonable adult would look at the employee and say "okay, I'll go to the back of the line."
2. A reasonable adult would hand his/her items to the friend in line so that the friend can pay for them (and would then step out of the line altogether).
3. A reasonable adult would choose to immediately leave the store with his/her friend if a petty, avoidable conflict has erupted. Why give a store your business that disrespects its customers? Go to another store and then write a letter to the national headquarters of the chain (copying the district and regional manager) and follow up with a phone call after the letter is sent.

What are the options for the foolish adult to choose?
1. The foolish adult would make a scene, start name-calling and displaying threatening behavior.
2. The foolish adult would refuse to follow the directions of the store employees and would escalate the situation further by yelling and acting irate.
3. The foolish adult would start nastily confronting any customers who are nearby who are trying to give directives.


Are we willing to examine the willingness of some of our people to side-step the issue of self-accountability?

Walmart stores have gotten some negative press about incidents with black customers in their stores. I've been in a Walmart about three times in the last couple of years and I've never had any incident. I was in a Walmart frequented by blacks and in a Walmart in an area that is located in a white suburb.

I have mentioned in several other discussions at this forum that we need to know the rules of the terrain that we step into - before we step into it. We need to know the rules - even when the rules are skewed to favor others. The optimal time to complain about the rules isn't after we are being held accountable for violating them.

Just how many news stories do we need to read before we will absorb the reality that societal rules are being enforced differently - depending on the class background and/or racial background and/or gender of the persons involved?

Is that fair? No. And life isn't fair. So what will you do to change what needs to be changed in our society if you are not strategically positioning yourself for dominance?

Knowing the rules and knowing the consequences of not adhering to them is crucial. Chenequa Campbell (the senior at Harvard who could not attend graduation) learned the consequences of not knowing (or ignoring) the unwritten rules for black students from the 'hood in an Ivy League environment. One mistake that many black students from the 'hood make when they enter the Ivy League is that they assume that blacks who are not in their class tier want them at the university. Chenequa learned that she wasn't a valued member of the Ivy League community - because no one defended her. Even black professors with tenure remained silent.

Oscar Grant died on the pavement of a train station - unarmed and cooperating with police. It was a blatant police murder caught on cell phone video. If the news reports about his criminal history are accurate, then it would not be an exaggeration to say that Oscar Grant was a career criminal with a rap sheet longer than my driveway who violated many people. He wanted to be a G! When he was murdered, we didn't want to discuss that. Instead, we focused only on the racial injustice of his murder. I am still not sure why any of us is shocked when those who live senseless lives die senselessly.

Is it being callous to teach our children that if they choose senseless, lawless lives that they will be on the losing side of lawlessness? I tell all of teens who want to be "gangsta": "If you are lawless, lawlessness will put your name on the roll." Why do we decide to march and rant when career criminals face the consequences of their senseless lives? Yes, that is someone's son, someone's daughter, and God's creation - with demons' architectural refinement added, let's not forget.

By enforcing the self-accountability imperative, are we saying that racial injustice is a minor issue? No.

It is vitally important for black women to implement concrete strategies when navigating racist terrain.

I read Boyce Watkins' piece Heather Ellis' Story Tells Us Why The Justice System Is Broken" and I don't think that there is a black person who would say that this country has a fair and impartial justice system. The justice system isn't broken because it was never together. The infrastructure of the justice system was established in order to uphold the privilege of those who were "favored" in society. Our law makers have ensured that this infrastructure has not been tampered with. This isn't news to me - and it shouldn't be news to you. I doubt that it was news to Heather Ellis.

The other blogs can discuss the broken criminal justice system. It won't be fixed in my life time. It serves a purpose of keeping the rungs of inequality in place. Which bastions of white supremacist power brokering have a vested interest in changing a broken criminal justice system? In order for those who control the criminal justice system to change the criminal justice system, they have to believe that the proposed changes made will benefit them. If they don't see a benefit for themselves that will result in increased power or increased control, they will not commit to or invest in criminal justice system reconstruction. It is with this reckoning that I would like to discuss self-accountability and personal consequences in a white supremacist societal infrastructure.

I mentioned in a blog discussion several months ago that I was in a ghetto hair salon when a female customer began using profanity and threatening to fight the hair stylist who was braiding her hair! I got up out of my chair (while my hair was being styled) and walked out of the salon and called the police. I wasn't about to wait until a knife was pulled out or until this belligerent woman texted some gang members to come to the salon and start shooting or fighting.

The police arrived within minutes and the people in the salon became strangely silent (and agitated). No one spoke to police. Magazines were suddenly pulled out of no where and covered all of the customers' faces who were seated. Even the hair stylists looked surprised that the police walked in! (I suppose violence is a norm for them too!)

The situation ended with the police taking the woman out of the salon and questioning her. She was not fighting the police officers. She obeyed their directive when told to leave the salon - a wise move considering that all four of them walked in with their palms resting on the handle of their guns. If that woman had gotten belligerent and had started fighting the police, I would not have felt guilty if they had hand-cuffed her and tossed her on the ground.

Her out-of-control behavior and violent mindset puts everyone around her at risk. No one seemed to understand that. They certainly didn't think that the police should be called just because someone is threatening someone else with violence!

What does that situation have to do with the Heather Ellis case?

Heather Ellis was in a predominately white town with an entrenched system of white supremacy in place. I will assume that the existence of racism in her town wasn't "new" to Heather Ellis. Lest anyone think that I am victim-blaming by mentioning that black women need to employ proactive strategies when navigating racist terrain, I can assure you that this discussion has nothing to do with blaming or shaming.

If I step into a situation where I know that racists could be bold enough to take off their masks at any time, I need to be mentally prepared. I also need to be able to execute a strategy to avoid stepping into the traps that they love to set.

I have mentioned in prior discussions that many black women whom I have encountered seem to be accepting of emotionally-undisciplined and angry black people in their midst. They may glance over at an out-of-control sista in a store and shake their heads, but they often sympathize with her. There was a time when black people embraced silent defiance as a response to racism. They marched in silence. They sat at lunch counters in silence. There was also a time when black people became vocal about racism. They even burned down businesses in their own neighborhoods that provided them with goods and services - in order to protest racism.

The methods that were used by blacks ten years ago, twenty years ago or fifty years ago are probably not going to be effective ways to address racism in 2009. We need to discuss why they aren't going to be effective.

Heather's story really doesn't have anything to do with cutting in line at Walmart. This situation has to do with the necessity of mental discipline and the consequences of not embracing that imperative. This situation is a text book scenario that reveals how the police handle black people when they decide that our outburst and our anger is a threat that warrants police discipline.

If I were in a store and a customer started using profanity, being loud, getting in someone's face, acting as if he or she was ready to resort to a physical confrontation, I would call the police on speed dial! I am not from an environment where I will adopt a wait-and-see attitude when encountering out-of-control behavior. Yelling at another person in public in a disagreement constitutes out-of-control behavior.

Should everyone be arrested for disorderly conduct who starts yelling and acting belligerent? When exactly does a public display of hostility and aggression become "disorderly"? After a fist meets someone's face or an object is thrown?

Boyce reports that "Somehow Heather, an honors student who has only gotten two traffic tickets her entire life, ended up being charged with disturbing the peace, trespassing and two counts of assaulting a police officer." I don't know if these charges are bogus or not. I don't think we can use the term "somehow" as if it is beyond our understanding how a simple disagreement escalated to police being called on the scene.

I don't know the details of Heather's case so I am not rendering a verdict at my forum about what occurred the day her quick trip to a store ended up so horribly.

If a person is asked to leave a store and that person refuses to follow that directive, trespassing charges could be launched. (I've told people that they can't participate in this forum any longer and most of them have returned to this forum anyway. This belligerent mentality that ignores boundaries can not be overlooked. This is the same mentality that would likely incite a police altercation where they are in handcuffs on the pavement. They refuse to follow the rules in a situation where they do not have the final say.)

If a black person finds himself or herself in a dispute with police, copping an attitude or arguing for justice is probably not going to produce the outcome desired.

"Why, you do have a point there, Shanquisha, we are being racist jerks right now and engaging in unjust racial profiling. Please turn around so we can take those handcuffs off of you. What were we thinking! Please find it in your heart to forgive our racism and disregard for fairness."

Is that what we think will happen when we confront wrongdoing with the police - while sitting in the back of a police car or surrounded by police officers (with guns)? Really?

If there are people who are reading this post who believe that they will receive an apology from police during an altercation, I am not sure what else it will take to help them understand that we are in AmeriKKKa - a nation that is not deeply appalled by racial inequality or class discrimination or economic warfare.

Does this mean that we shouldn't fight racism? No.

I keep saying that we need a different strategy. In fact, we need a set of strategies. Neck-rolling and open aggression when encountering racism is not likely to result in a change in policy in a store, or a change in police culture on the police force.

"Well she got mad because was provoked!" some may argue. If all it takes for you to lose emotional control is a racist person making a demeaning comment to you (which is a trap) or someone in a store accusing you falsely of something that isn't even a crime, then I would encourage you to engage in some deeper self-examination. There are traps that racists set when they are in public in order to provoke a confrontation with a black person and then they will step back and be "entertained" when the police arrive. It's the game of "catch a ni_____" and it happens all over this country.

When will we wise up to the tactic?

In our discussions at this forum, I have noticed how eager people are to discuss the external factors of society that marginalize black women and black people, and how hostile many have become when the focus turns inward - and when self-accountability is our collective focus.

Some of us must learn how to fight the fight in different terrain - and recognize which strategies will succeed and which will fail.

I hope that the charges are dropped against Heather Ellis. However, IF she was belligerent and hostile with police, then she probably should have taken a plea deal on a misdemeanor charge when it was offered to her.

If black women want to reposition themselves to attain dominance, we have to be mentally-together, and emotionally-disciplined - not some of the time but all of the time.

For blacks who function in a society where racism and classism permeate the criminal justice system, the costs of not maintaining mental and emotional discipline are outrageously high.

Are you the next Heather Ellis? Am I?

Let's talk about ways to reduce the likelihood that we will be.

WHEN SAFETY BECOMES AN AFTER-THOUGHT TO BLACK WOMEN

In April 2008, I presented a post about "Daddy Hunger and the Sistas Who Misdiagnose It". As part of that discussion, I offered a 21-page article on "A Theory of Human Motivation" so that black women who were following the conversation could look at the components that must be met in order for human beings to function normally. "The basis of Maslow's theory of motivation is that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed."

The respect for safety is a crucial element in self-preservation.

This forum focuses on the self-actualization of black women but the reality that we must confront is that the majority of black women are not functioning at the top of the needs hierarchy pyramid. I suspect that a large segment of black women in our country are actually addressing needs fulfillment at the physiological level - at the bottom of the needs hierarchy but may not realize it.

One of the basic needs listed in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is safety.

For so many black women, the lack of safety that is prevalent in most all-black areas has been normalized. I don't hear many black women discussing how dysfunctional our psyche becomes - collectively and individually - when we become accustomed to a lack of safety.

This is a serious issue for us to explore because Maslow asserted that if both the physiological and safety needs are fully-gratified then there will emerge healthy love, affection and belongingness needs.

In order for us to satisfy love, affection and belongingness needs in a healthy way, we have to have gratified needs in those other areas. The discussion about why so many black women are unmarried has other factors than just the population disparity between black men and black women, and the prevalence of cultural norms in all-black constructs that fuel xenophobia and black bigotry. If we discuss the needs hierarchy, another factor emerges for us to examine that relates to our emotional capital.

Women who grew up in constructs where safety needs were unmet (or devalued) often wrestle with camouflaged low self-esteem. Maslow wrote that, "Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability and adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting of these needs produces feelings of inferiority, of weakness and of helplessness."

There are quite a few black male bloggers who have made remarks at various online forums to denigrate black women who dared to speak out about the lack of safety that many black girls encounter in black constructs. "You can't take the heat!" one black male blogger ridiculed. Black women were discussing the need to leave residential areas where black women were facing mental and emotional assaults on a regular basis when leaving their homes. "White folks commit crime too!" another sneered. Of course, that is hardly the point. Those taunts were intended to establish a diversion from the core issue - whether black women are in more danger by remaining in black constructs than black women who are living outside of those constructs. I believe that they are - because they are in a culture that does not issue social penalties for perpetuating a certain climate.

We often have a lot of apprehension about sharing our views about this because we don't want to be accused by other black people of diminishing pathologies among whites and minimizing dangerous areas that exist in all-white settings. If black women say that they believe that black women routinely confront more danger in all-black areas within the ghetto than they do outside of those areas, they are accused of vilifying their people or accused of magnifying the criminality of their own people. This fear of reprisal fuels their silence about their lack of safety. I mention this in "The Silencing of the Castaways" and "The Hidden Reality of Black Women".

I have lived in many non-black residential areas. Shouting at women who are passing by is not tolerated. Making sexual comments or mocking passerby is not tolerated. Using profanity in public spaces where it can be overheard by others is not even tolerated. Exhibiting any out-of-control behavior is not tolerated. Menacing and taunting behavior is not ignored; Police are quickly called because it is perceived that permitting these dynamics produces an unsafe environment for others.

One reason why we spend a lot of time in this forum discussing the environments that black women have validated (or have become accustomed to functioning in) is because it is directly tied to the construction of their personhood and directly influences the contours of their personalities. The aggression that some black women have exhibited in this forum is often a result of the environment that they have come from - where hostility and combativeness is normative. They often do not even recognize it as hostility because it is so pervasive in the social interactions in those environments.

In the post, "Am I The Next Megan? Are You?, I outlined some specific changes that I believe would be useful for many black women to make. This forum continues to be solution-driven and to offer concrete steps that can be implemented in addressing various issues.

Even though it has been reported that Megan has now re-canted her story, I am not convinced that she was never assaulted. I've been in the emergency room too many times when medical evidence proved that a woman was raped or savagely beated, and she stated it to the medical staff and to me - only to deny later that she ever mentioned how her injuries occurred. I believe that we will benefit from evaluating (and re-evaluating!) the aspects of our cultural landscape that minimize the acknowledgment of danger and violation faced by black women.

I counseled one woman who told me that her superiors at work called a meeting and indicated that she would be terminated if she didn't deal with her hostile demeanor. She insisted that she was being typecast by white co-workers as an "angry black woman". She was floored when I told her, "you come across to me as a hostile person - even in your interactions with people in social settings in church. Even your so-called humorous put-downs to others are laced with hostility." We talked for a long time and she kept defending her behavior. She could not grasp why she was perceived as being hostile. Her tone of voice was often hostile. Her approach was often filled with aggression. Her body language was often hostile. In her mind, she related to others the way that everyone in her environment related to one another - so she didn't see it as dysfunctional at all.

Those who have been in environments were verbal violence is commonplace will tend to normalize verbal violence in their typical interactions with others. I believe this is common within the psyche that is formed in constructs where safety needs are invalidated. I hope that we can be change agents in helping others to recognize the impact of repudiating safety needs and how it impedes normal emotional and social development in black children.

A few months ago, we had a group dialogue about "The Resocialization of The Black Woman" and I mentioned that it is important for black women who have spent their entire lives (or the bulk of their lives) around black people to recognize that the social norms are vastly different when they are outside of racially-homogeneous social settings. I don't believe that our group analysis went far enough, because I believe that it is important to tie Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to the process of resocialization.

Maslow suggested that the "so-called 'psychopathic personality' is another example of permanent loss of the love needs." This was an intriguing observation for me. All healthy human beings have love needs but there are many people who are emotionally-unhealthy and don't know it. It is essentially impossible for emotionally-unhealthy persons to form healthy love needs. Their love needs are dysfunctional.

The common assumption is that having a love need is normal and healthy. Maslow introduced the aspect of recognizing unhealthy love needs.

I am wondering: Do those who feel unloved and devalued and socially-marginalized develop unhealthy love needs? How do love needs deteriorate? What type of environment accelerates the deterioration of love needs?

I saw a movie trailer for the film "Precious" that will open on November 6th. In the book (and the film), Precious is a teenager who is repeatedly being raped and is then impregnated by her father. She is also emotionally, mentally, physically and even sexually abused by her mother who was consumed by hostility and rage. Precious walked around with a scowl on her face most of the time. She was socially-withdrawn and had a fractured self-identity. I don't think that many of us will see emotional illness in any of Precious' behavior. Buried hostility is not associated with emotional illness among many black women who I've encountered over the years.

Hostility and aggression is often associated with unmet needs for safety and often reflects the outcomes of a lack of sufficient emotional nurturing.

I've spoken to many black women over the years and it seems that black women who have remained in slum areas have faced more instances of street harassment and criminal behavior than black women who grew up as I did - in a pristine suburb (where there were only two police officers). Many black women laugh in disbelief when tell them about the time when my sister and I were young and she saw a large spider in her bedroom and called the police to come and kill it - and they came!

This brand new 45-minute interview features the author, Sapphire, of the 1996 novel Push that the film "Precious" is based on:



I was on the West side of Chicago in the 'hood many years ago and I was struck by the fact that those around me didn't seem to believe that they were in an extremely dangerous part of town. Shootings and fights were so common that no one seemed to think there was anything wrong with living in that type of environment. I realized that one reason why there is such a high rate of rape in those environments was that sexual predators usually received automatic immunity by the culture of silence reinforced by black women in those communities. Another reason was mentioned in the interview with Sapphire and Katie Couric shown above - the prevalence of predator mentalities among those who feel powerless.

Another aspect is the pathology associated with the "Strong Black Woman" syndrome that reinforces the deterioration of "fear and flight" instincts. I've met many black women who think it is a sign of weakness to feel fear. Their decision to refute any feelings of fear actually created a mentality that allowed them to be victims of danger more often. Their fear alarm had been muted and the "flight" instinct had disappeared.

Every person who comes to this forum has to have an understanding of where he/she is operating from in the hierarchy of needs. This forum focuses on four stages of self-actualization for black women but I have spent a great deal of time getting black women to admit to and examine where we really are as a group. If we can't be truthful about where we are collectively in the hierarchy of needs, then we can't actually move forward with deliberate integrity as we embrace these empowerment ideologies.

I have quickly and harshly removed those who have brought any form of deceit into this forum because our tolerance of the self-deception of others in our camp will severely and detrimentally impact black women (as a group) on many levels. We are now seeing the results of validating the normalcy of self-deception - and how it fuels a lack of collective accountability. We see how it fosters a culture of shunning and attacking introspection.

We invest a lot of time in this forum holding up a mirror for ourselves and asking "what can be fixed?" I believe that our willingness to engage in that process continuously will have a powerful and measurable impact on the pace of advancement.

If we want to be self-actualized women (and I believe that those of you who are reading this post have that desire), then we can not devalue the process of ensuring that black women's needs for safety are affirmed, and addressed.

Radical changes will be necessary for so many of our sistas in order to re-construct lifestyles that prioritize the fulfillment of safety needs. Somehow, we have to engage black women in that difficult process of eradicating the normalization of violation - violation of social boundaries, violation of physical boundaries, violation of emotional boundaries, and violation of value systems.

Where can we begin and how can we function as change agents in this process?

BLACK DIVESTMENT AND CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM (A GUEST COLUMN)

Black Women, Blow The Trumpet! is proud to present a noted academic and an advocate of black women's empowerment. She is the fifth columnist who has contributed to this think tank and is known online as Pioneer Valley Woman. It is wonderful to include her teaching and to present other sides of the black divestment discussion! Please feel free to pose your questions for our guest columnist in the comment section, or at her blog, Episcopalienne!

I am delighted to present to you an esteemed scholar, professor, ethicist and critical race theorist...
____________________________________________________

Rev. Lisa has invited me to write a guest blog essay "Critical Race Feminism and the Divestment Imperative." I'm quite delighted to do so.

A brief introduction. I'm an academic, trained as a historian with a strong interest in intellectual history, especially African American thought. I host the blog: www.episcopalienne.blogspot.com. I teach women's history, with a special emphasis on feminist theory. I came to critical race feminism in graduate school, in that I took classes outside of the history department, within the law school, where I learned from faculty who were asking questions about women, race and gender from the perspectives of policy and law: how have tradition civil rights rhetoric affected black women? What were its limitations? What were the limitations of traditional gender-based rhetoric, ie., feminism?

Critical race feminism for me is part of an ongoing attempt to give voice to the unique concerns of African American women. There is an old saying that became the title of a book, that civil rights discussions presume that all the blacks are men, and all the women are white. Each category addresses only one aspect of black women's identity, but not the places at which they meet, in which our race-based concerns are affected by gender and our gender-based concerns are affected by our race.

So critical race feminists, like black feminists, have had serious arguments with the "civil rights establishment" and black nationalist perspectives of what racial discrimination looks like. A long time ago, they began talking about the ways in which black male movement leaders presumed that black women experienced discrimination exactly like black men do, and critiqued the view that there is no sexism in the black community. They questioned the race to the bottom, that black women and men are in competition to see who suffers the most, and complained that black women are always being urged to forget their gender. They challenged sexism in the movement and the perspective that men's concerns matter more. Gender discussions, in their view, were not "divisive" and indicative of "disloyalty".

This is the foundation for divestment: the ability to think about race and gender intersections.

Although Rev. Lisa's blog is not a feminist one, and she is not a feminist, she asks questions that I can understand and identify with as a critical race feminist. Mainstream feminism, it is true, has been animated primarily by the concerns of middle and upper class white women, even though black women were early participants in the fight of gender justice. Thus, women of color developed critical race feminism in response to the whiteness of mainstream feminism. So in terms of being a critical race feminist, I don't buy the argument that mainstream feminism has nothing to offer women of color. I am thinking here about some of the various predominant schools of mainstream feminist thought that have been influential in the law/policy realm: equal treatment, cultural/difference and dominance, and the ways in which Rev. Lisa's posts address raise questions regarding their applications to the lives of black women.

Not many people might be familiar with the argument that there are "feminisms," and not one "feminism". The presumption is that all feminists are radical, man-hating lesbians, and that feminism is for white women--the "white women's feminism" argument. Granted, some feminists are radical, but not all. And as I explained earlier, the "white women's feminism" argument has led black women to reject any analysis of gender, a move detrimental to their interests.

However, the fact that many of feminism's goals have become mainstream might mean that if a woman calls herself a feminist, she is seen as an extremist--feminists today are seen as overly strident. In the wake of feminism's gains, feminism itself is seen by some as irrelevant, so why call oneself a feminist? I argue it is still relevant, because gender is still relevant. In addition, it is easy to forget that much of what we take for granted today were due to the efforts of early women's rights activists, and their efforts in their day were considered pretty radical, like the right to vote. On the other hand, branding feminists as radical and lesbian has been an effective means of shutting down any discussion of women's legitimate gender-based concerns, especially in the black community. Any time a black woman talks about gender, she will be labeled a feminist, whether she is one or not, or the blame for black women's plight will be placed at feminism's feet, a claim I question.

Too many gains came to women in general for me to say feminism is to blame for everything, as though nothing good has ever come out of feminist theory. Sex discrimination laws? Domestic violence laws? Rape protection laws? Not all interests that affect black women are limited to race. Some of my colleagues in the law school run programs where students work with victims of domestic violence, and the local women lawyer's association has asked me to work with them on editing a manual for lawyers working with impoverished women. Feminists have been at the forefront of efforts to improve women's lives. So it behooves black women to develop a more comprehensive understanding before they are bamboozled into forgetting their own race and gender interests.

I'll move on now to talk about the predominant schools of feminist thought.

Equal treatment feminism sets forth the proposition that women are equal, or should be equal to men, but for discrimination and sexism. Equal treatment feminism animated the legal reforms that enabled more women to exercise rights to vote, own property, manage their finances and access, in today's world, many traditional male-dominated fields. This is what many think of when they think of feminism--it is the most well-known school of feminist thought.

And yet, women are not men, so how to account for differences? The cultural/difference feminists argued that women experience disadvantages when they try to be exactly like men, because there are ways in which women are exactly like men, and others in which their attempts to become like men can tend to backfire, because they hold themselves to a male standard which they can't meet. An example: pregnancy--women get pregnant, men don't. Thus, cultural/difference feminists were at the forefront in fighting for laws protecting pregnant workers and gaining family and medical leave policies. Cultural/difference feminists argue that women are equal, but that they are also still entitled to protection, out of respect to their femaleness--Rev. Lisa would call it chivalry. And they argue that the focus on absolute equality encourages men to treat women like men.

This, I think was a failing of equal treatment; it has been the most influential school of feminist thought, yet it has opened the door for women's differences to be rejected and disrespected. Thus detractors call cultural/difference feminism "special treatment". Others argue that it can lead to stereotyping; earlier generations of women's rights opponents used the protection argument to deny women equality, ie., that women are too delicate to pursue careers in the male-dominated professions, and so forth.

The dominance feminists argued that equal treatment and cultural/difference compare women to men, while forgetting the ways in which women are traditionally dominated. Some examples: sexual harassment laws, Catharine McKinnon's arguments against pornography, or programs to help or protect women from sexual assault and violence. These feminists think about the ways in which women's femaleness makes them vulnerable in a male-dominated society. I see myself as a cultural/difference type critical race feminist, but I'm also pragmatic--depending on the circumstances, the equal treatment and dominance theories might make more sense.

So Rev. Lisa is urging us to think about the constructs that affect black women's lives. She says: "dismantle, divest and diversify". Critical race feminism can be a tool in that endeavor to define black womanhood and utilize social constructs to pursue those goals. The key word here is critique, the ability to assess--that is at the heart of her message--assessing institutions and practices that affect black women's lives. Dismantle them, divest from them and diversify by pursuing connections outside the traditional institutions that black women support.

Here are some great links to a well-known critical race feminist reader--the book's web page and the introductory chapter:

http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=3367
http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/0814793932intro.pdf

See also, a link for a book chapter on a discussion of feminist theory in general:

http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/0814751989toc.pdf

--
Regards,

"PioneerValleyWoman"
http://episcopalienne.blogspot.com

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS - FROM THE BLACK WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE

On Monday, Black Women, Blow The Trumpet! will have a guest columnist who will discuss critical race feminism as it relates to divestment (which is stage 2 of the path of self-actualization). I am excited and honored and I know that everyone will gain a lot from the online exchange that we will have with our guest columnist.

Since I have noticed an enormous spike in blog traffic during the last two weeks that I have been spending quality time on Facebook, I realize that we have many new spectators who are sitting in the bleachers who have not mustered the courage to step up to the mic!

There is a link on the sidebar for those who have new topics that they would like this think tank to present, and all of our sistas who visit this blog are welcome to offer ideas for new topics! (New blog guests, just look on the sidebar for the word "SPEAK"!)

Your questions on the posts should be placed in the comment section of the respective post, but if there are questions you have on self-actualization that do not pertain to a specific post, please feel free to share those questions today!

While you are thinking of some questions to pose to the group... here are some random questions on my mind for the blog guests. This is an introspection blog so let's dive into it!

1 - Besides the factors that we have already examined in this think tank, what are the biggest obstacles to our collective elevation that black women are (partially or solely) responsible for perpetuating?

2 - What will be required of black women (as a collective) to address bigoted attitudes that are widely accepted among us, and to remove the popularity of black bigotry?

3 - What are the most effective "baby steps" for black women who must begin a self-exile from their own dysfunctional and toxic family members?

4 - How should divested black women prepare black female teenagers to begin to identify and fortify their political and socioeconomic capital (while in college) in order to position themselves for upward class mobility?

5 - How can the divestment imperative be reinforced among black women at HBCUs?


6 - How should black women (as a group) prepare - emotionally and strategically - for the annihilation of black men in America that will be completed by 2029? (New blog guests should see the group discussion on "The Annihilation of Black Men".)

Not convinced about the annihilation of black men? Just spend some time with the U.S. Census Fact Finder search engine and research the daily birth rate of black male babies compared to the daily rate of black male homicides. Look at the patterns in the last twenty years.

Add to that the rate of black male incarceration by checking out the Bureau of Justice Prison Statistics and go to CDC AIDS/HIV facts to examine the statistics on the rate of black male HIV/AIDS infection. Take note of the estimates of the untreated HIV/AIDS in the black male population, especially with the black teen population. Untreated HIV/AIDS leads to early deaths.

Add to that the rate of untreated mental and emotional illness in the black male population - which will soon result in black male adolescents being institutionalized. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among black men between the ages of 15 and 24. I predict that mass construction of asylums will be the next big industry to remove society's "undesireables". It is estimated that 66% of black men and teens who are living in urban areas meet the criteria for PTSD a month after receiving a violent injury.

Add to that the rate of police murder of black men each month in the last five years and note the slow and steady increase. Anyone who "claims" that black men are not being systematically annihilated are intentionally choosing to ignore the evidence! Check out "Where Have All The Black Men Gone?" It was published in 2005!

Allow me to provide the skeletal blueprint of the Black Male Annihilation Formula:
Systematic Incarceration+Institutionally-Sponsored Extermination+Long-term Self-Deterioration/Destruction+ Sustained Rates of Black Abortions+ Declining Rates of Black Male Educational Capital+(Voluntary and Compulsory) Exclusion From Societal Mainstream+A Fatal Epidemic+Legislative Reinforcement= Inevitable Annihilation

7 - How should black women (as a group) ensure that the factions that are committed stakeholders in the annihilation of black men begin to recognize the growing segment of black women who are not invested in fighting against or reversing this annihilation process?

8 - Should black women (as a group) assume any level of responsibility for the fate of black men? Should we care that the annihilation process of black men in America is 75% complete? (Before responding, be sure you check out the group discussion, "Black Divestment and Critical Returns".)

9 - What about black women who are unwed mothers with fatherless sons - what are their feelings/fears about the declining rates of black men in our societal infrastructure? (Homicide is the leading cause of death for black male teenagers and black men in the age range of 15 to 24.)

10 - Examining the formula outlined above, what should black women do right now to avoid being included in the annihilation process? (Which strategies have we not explored?)

11 - Are black women (as a group) emotionally prepared to reckon with an increased polarization among black women in the next ten years that will separate the enormous segment of slave-indoctrinated black women from the fully-divested black women?