The Revived Assault on Abortion Further Exposes White Supremacy's Tug of War Over Black Bodies5/17/2019 Growing up my entire life in Iowa, it wasn’t until I got to college that I realized there was the widely held misconception that the process of racial formation somehow skipped over the rural-dominated Midwestern states.
“There’s Black people in Iowa?”, my friends from Chicago, New York or St. Louis would ask, almost jokingly. The short answer, of course, is yes. More than that, I’ve never had to look outside my hometown of Des Moines to understand the concepts I’d learn in sociology and African-American studies lectures. In Des Moines the most significant Black enclave is in the historic Drake University neighborhood on the city’s west side. Perhaps because of the small, condensed nature of Des Moines it was always easy to notice the stark contrast between the “Drake hood” and adjacent downtown districts just east of it. For the watchful observer it only takes five minutes or so to watch the buildings go from abundant and state-of-the-art to scattered and run down; for the streets to go from clean and well-paved to littered and full of cracks and potholes; for the people to go from white to Black. It always amazed me, given the well known poverty existing in this area, that there were no job training or rehab centers in the capital city of a state with the worst racial incarceration disparities in America. More than that there were no daycare centers, no grocery stores, no homeless shelters, no medical clinics: not even a public school. One summer I spent every Monday evening performing at a live music venue on MLK and University; the heart of the Drake area. I remember looking out the window and only seeing a few restaurants (the highfalutin kind catering to college students), a barber shop, a police station, and across the street a Planned Parenthood office. It was clear to me by then that this Planned Parenthood (PP), the only local resource for soon to be mothers (and fathers), was symbolic of a larger phenomenon at play. In a historically red state, PP and the Black, poor and disabled women who overwhelmingly find themselves gracing its halls are contentious points of political bartering over the issue of abortion; an issue which has silently become a discussion about minoritized classes in America. Ironically, it is the voices and experiences of Black women and other disadvantaged groups which are largely absent from this debate, leaving them in a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” political hotbox which ultimately serves to entrap them in a slow burning holocaust. The abortion debate would be a much simpler conversation for radical Black voices if the proliferation of such institutions as PP weren’t mired in a racist and classist history. Nevertheless PP suffers from a trend that the entire history of American medical science has yet to escape. Medicine in Black life has historically been a tool of colonization, with white doctors and institutions supplanting themselves in Black communities with the primary goal of using their bodies for research and profit, effectively draining the population of its literal life force. One only need google “Tuskegee syphilis experiment” or “James Marion Sims,” the father of gynecology who exclusively experimented on the bodies of enslaved African women and infants, mutilating every subjected he ever tested on. And then there is the well hidden and sanitized eugenic legacy of Margaret Sanger, the proclaimed hero of women’s reproductive rights; the founder and primary crusader for the corporation now known as Planned Parenthood (PP). One of the great American crimes against humanity is the revision of racist and classist histories for the sole purpose of making it more comfortable for us to live with the results: and no other single legacy epitomizes this practice than the legacy of Margaret Sanger and the role she played in progressing genocidal beliefs and practices. Eugenics is a philosophical and political movement sponsored by elite whites which focuses on eradicating unwanted populations such as Blacks, the poor and the disabled. Fueled by the belief that these groups burden society, eugenicists believe that eliminating these populations would improve the gene pool and thus society as a whole. Margaret Sanger was a proud and vociferous advocate for eugenics, not only speaking on behalf of the ideals but organizing resources and power to make eugenics a reality. In Sanger’s 1919 article Birth Control and Racial Betterment (yes, that’s the ACTUAL title) she links the goals of eugenics to the goals of her own goal of promoting birth control; “Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It [eugenics] is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit…” Who are these “unfit” Sanger speaks of? Well, in a 1950 letter Sanger advocates “a simple, cheap, safe contraceptive to be used in poverty stricken slums, jungles and among the most ignorant people.” Sanger understood that adapting legislation to meet these goals would take extensive organization and fundraising as she writes in a 1932 Birth Control Review article, where she also advocated segregation as a means of controlling Black and other undesired populations and expressed her desires to keep “immigration closed to the interests of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race.” Donald trump would be proud. In 1950 Sanger wrote “There should be national sterilization for certain dysgenic types of our populations who are being encouraged to breed, and would die out were the government not feeding them.” She then put her money where her mouth was and made Clarence Gamble of Proctor and Gamble - a leading organizer in the cause of eugenics - the national director of her organization the American Birth Control League, which later became known as Planned Parenthood (I guess the name tested better with focus groups?). She failed in an attempt to merge her organization with the American Eugenics Society. However, Gamble helped make Sanger’s vision material, leading a successful national lobbying effort to get sterilization programs adopted into 31 state legislators. Across America, Black, poor and disabled women were involuntarily sterilized in the tens of thousands; Black males castrated in the thousands. The State of North Carolina recently paid out reparations for this program. This is not to mention Sanger’s political scheming to involve unwitting Black clergy into the plan, suggesting that they were the perfect tool to pacify “rebellious masses” of rightfully angry Black citizens. When Sanger speaks on the right to choose, she is inevitably speaking on behalf of white women. It is clear she did not intend for Black populations to exist in the future. Even today the legacy of this movement can be seen in empirical data. As recent as 2012 in New York City more Black children were aborted (31,328) than born (24,758). In addition Planned Parenthood was recently investigated when it was found that their affiliates were bartering and possibly profiting from the sale of fetal organs and body parts… Even so, the so-called “pro-life” Republicans are engaged in a classic example of weaponizing their white Christianity in an effort to criminalize blackness. Without any meaningful attempts to alleviate the conditions of poverty which are clearly correlated to abortion rates, new prohibitions on women’s reproductive rights in states with large Black populations and histories of chattel enslavement, jim crow and mass incarceration are blatant attempts to punish Black and other vulnerable communities for prevailing social conditions. One must also take into account that Black women are nearly three times as likely to attempt aborting a pregnancy than white counterparts. Black women are also 247% more likely to have fatal birth experiences. This current maneuver is a blatant criminalization of poverty: another addition onto the list of southern “Black Codes” which will ultimately end up in the destruction of more human life and the disenfranchisement of Black womanhood. The result is the deepening of a depressing double-bind which took 400+ years of white supremacy to create. Were legislators truly “pro-life” they’d concern themselves with the conditions that create impoverished realities. They’d be concerned with the outrageous circumstances of rural poverty and urban Black male unemployment. They’d begin by solving the problems of disease and incarceration as well as police, urban and sexual violence. Instead they hide behind theatrical performances of phony faith. We must be clear that what Republicans are doing around state legislators are not acts of faith: they are acts of white supremacist state control. This is hardly different from the days on slave plantations when Black women had no control over when and where they would reproduce. Now they are once again being forced to produce victims for the machine like system of white supremacy. As a proud Muslim man it frustrates me to see God’s likeness use to justify abuse. Yes, the Quran warns against the slaughter of future generations for fear of poverty, which in my theological reading can be understood as a prediction and direct condemnation of eugenic politics (see the Gospel’s comments on believers warring against principalities of evil and spiritual wickedness in high places). However, the Quran also urges that there be no compulsion in religion. The reason being that faith - true faith - and adherence to it must be a choice; the result of one's heart being compelled to follow scripture. Without choice one person’s “faith” becomes another’s oppression. -Matthew X
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Many fans of Hip-Hop, if not most, have a moment, or a time in their life, where they fell in love with the genre forever. For me, it was the night that J. Cole released 2014 Forest Hills Drive, an instant classic of a Hip-Hop album with elite lyricism, vivid storytelling and a timeless spirit to it which touched me at my core. To say it simply, I saw myself, a young black Freshman on a Big 10 campus where he felt out of place, reflected throughout the album. J. Cole provided me with a soundtrack that met me at the perfect intersection of time and space. Whether it was songs about losing your virginity, dealing with the omnipresent threat of violence, navigating romance or simply being that nigga, I saw life presented in the way that I experienced it and what was most important was that not once in the entire album did J. Cole apologize for his story.
Of course, I had heard Hip-Hop music since as early in my life as I can remember. My father has an enviable collection of old CDs’ which range from the Motown's greatest hits, to Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Parliament Funkadelic, TLC, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac, Ice Cube, the Notorious B.I.G., Koolio and even the Quad Cities DJ's (something y'all def gotta check out). Some of my earliest memories are of he and I jamming to tracks like California Love, Today Was a Good Day and Gin 'n Juice which are to this day some of my favorite songs. However, growing up in Des Moines where I wasn't exposed to the creation of Hip-Hop - whether it be fashion, music, dance or visual art - I didn't come to understand what Hip-Hop was until I was a young adult. Until 2014 FHD captured my imagination Hip-Hop to me was an accumulation of sounds and lyrical forms; Hip-Hop was looped beats with a variety of high hats, 808s and baselines combined with clever rhymes called raps, many times which painted pictures of everyday scenes or sometimes wholesale stories. I had never thought about this genre, or really any genre of art, as a means of producing meaning. It had never occurred to me that truth was being explored or even created in the process of making Hip-Hop music and culture. But as J. Cole's iconic album ended, I found myself listening to Love Yourz and I got a feeling in my stomach, something like excited butterflies, that I was experiencing a version of the world that I had never been exposed to before. One where I, and others like me, could escape what seemed like rigid and inescapable truths in life by entering a world of possibilities limited only by my will and imagination. So, picture freshman Matt in his cramped dorm room, empowered by his newly formed sociological imagination, frantically searching the web for an explanation of what he had just experienced. The first thing he does is search J. Cole. He's heard his other albums before (Born Sinner and Sideline Story) but it becomes quickly apparent that the rest of the world is hailing the new album as J. Cole's best, an instant classic and possibly the piece that launches him into the "greatest rapper alive" conversation. Soon he finds that there's this robust discussion on twitter of the great Hip-Hop albums of this generation, which makes Matt ask; how are Hip-Hop albums judged? Wait, what is Hip-Hop? Well these questions aren't easily answered. One must do a considerable amount of research; a combination of reading endless amounts of theories about the genre and also spending hours on hours of time combing the internet for music, searching for moments where artists hit that sweet spot and paint vivid pictures of their world and possible worlds yet to be experienced. This project, starting in the fall of 2014, lasts through winter all the way into spring of 2015. In this time, he discovers Chance the Rapper's Acid Rap, Talib Kweli and Mos Def's Black Star, the ENTIRE Outkast catalog, Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor (parts 1 and 2) and Schoolboy Q's Oxymoron. He also begins consuming unrealistic amounts of Hip-Hop theory; from KRS-One's lectures on the definition and origins of Hip-Hop, to Michael Eric Dyson and Tricia Rose's ongoing scholarly dialogue, to Funk Master Flex and DJ Cool Herk's recollections of the birth of the Hip-Hop, Matt even scours Netflix for any documentaries or series on this urban culture. And then, it happens. Kendrick Lamar drops To Pimp A Butterfly. Now, up to this point I was a J. Cole fan and had been since Sideline Story (even though as I've said I rediscovered what rap meant to me along the way). However, Kendrick Lamar had been an up and coming star ever since my late years in Highschool and the entire world seemed to be buzzing with anticipation of his sophomore album. To paint a clear picture, Black people, especially young adults, were in a deep cycle of politicization and radicalization due to the litany of unjustifiable police murders. Liberation politics were what we fed our souls on, and Lamar's TPAB seemed to meet the pro-black, old-school Hip-Hop, liberation warrior right in the middle of historical appreciation and creative innovation. It was an album the world was asking for, but not necessarily ready for. To a young Matt it was, more than any other single piece of art before or since, the most impressionable experience of his lifetime. That album gave me a way to understand politics, life, racism, struggle, God and my own spirituality that will stick with me probably until the day I physically leave this world. It was intellectual, it was diligent, it was incredibly courageous. It was like the perfect sonic novel to which I could (and still do) go back to explain pretty much any theory about Black life. Why the long-winded intro? Because we must define Hip-Hop and its identity to make the claim it's in a state of crisis. The definition I crudely came across in that time which I have continued to stick with is this: Hip-Hop describes an urban culture which formed in the mid-1970s Bronx mostly by youth of African descent which stood on 4 pillars. They are DJing, Emceeing, Breaking (or Breakdancing) and Graffiti. Many would argue that there is a 5th pillar, knowledge, the creation of which is the overall goal of Hip-Hop. Perhaps an extended definition would go on to explain how fashion and slang became fundamental aspects of this culture, and even that things like Social Media and technological innovation have become inseparable from Hip-Hop cultural production. Fine. Some would argue that breaking has been replaced by other forms of dance associated with Hip-Hop music. Others will note that it is crucial to remember that Hip-Hop’s formations are linked to the decay of America’s urban centers. Cool. But this basic definition is important because it describes Hip-Hop at its core, it's fundamental beginning, which is a culture based not just on a type of music, but instead of the mastery of certain forms of expression. These forms of expression took place simultaneously in urban spaces, many times overlapping each other. What emerged was an extremely rapid growth of this grassroots culture which accommodated massive amounts of largely Black urban youths who had been disenfranchised by the politics of neoliberalism and urban renewal. These kids now had a new rhythm to rock to, one that championed their own individuality, talents and thirst free expression. Hip-Hop in many ways captured the free spirit of resistance and liberation by allowing creative avenues for an increasingly distressed population. The result in the first two decades of the genre was a type of street culture that is so diverse in its narratives, images, stories, themes, motifs and representations of Black life that I honestly don't believe, unless you were there to experience it, there's any way we could truly imagine it today. Contrary to popular belief, women, although obviously experiencing forms of sexism, were greatly empowered by this new form of expression. This was clear in certain sections of the culture more than others. Emceeing, for example, offered Black women a form of vocal expression not necessarily centered on beauty, grace or sexuality, but allowed them to show off their intellect, creativity, humor, aggressiveness and nuance. They were also empowered in many ways by breaking, which rejected male and female roles in dance which forms such as swing jazz subscribed to, as well the fashion which was largely unisex in its designs and forms. Women didn't have to dress sexy or graceful in a world where everybody was "fly". And largely throughout the culture there would have been a variety of narratives on Black life which implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) rejected the racial stereotypes that America desired and replaced them with diverse images of Black life; street scholars, 5 percenters, Black Nationalists, regular schoolboys and schoolgirls, pompous performers, gangsters, drug dealers, creative geniuses, aliens from inner and outer space and those who were just plain fly. However, something changed the course of Hip-Hop forever and put us into a state, as I will argue, of modern day identity crisis. That something is this; Hip-Hop was successful, more successful than any of its founders and pioneers could have ever imagined. Not enough scholarship exists on this time, but around the end of the 80s through the mid-2000s Hip-Hop saw an explosion of commercial success and mainstream exposure which obviously changed the culture forever. DJs, MCs, and anybody else with talents that could be monetized went from local heroes to worldwide stars, from disenfranchised youth to virtually overnight millionaires in many cases. Of course, this is an expedited history, but the combination of cultural novelty, policies created by the government and major labels (pretty much the same entity) such as the Telecommunications Act of 1994 which centralized Hip-Hop making it easier to control and drive a profit from, and America's thirst for subconscious racial imagery fueled boom in the production of Hip-Hop. In this rush to capitalize on this new cultural craze, the images which were being sold across the world changed for a few reasons. First, was the new audience. As Hip-Hop became more popular its population became less poor and very notably less Black (today 70% of the audience is white). This resulted in certain images which fit America's racial paradigms; Black people mainly as violent, criminal, hypersexual and materially obsessed, thus forming what Tricia Rose call's the holy trinity of rap, gangstas, pimps and hos. Also, the point of production changes radically. Hip-Hop music is created less and less in local arenas such as basketball courts and street corners which are largely impromptu, free form and not for profit and more and more in corporate sponsored studios where creative control ultimately rests with the sponsors of the projects; record labels. This results in a culture who's main goal is no longer to express but to sell. This does not stop at the rappers and producers. No! It implicates every one of us. I argue that every person who considers themselves a part of this culture, especially Black people, are in large part involuntary participants in a constant marketing campaign to sell commodified forms of Blackness to the world. Our dances are made into emotes on Fortnite or co-opted by the likes of pop acts such as Miley Cyrus. Our hair styles are appropriated and diluted by models both at agencies and on social media. Our language and cultural symbols are mimicked by pretty much everybody. Our bodies are literally being reconstructed via plastic surgery to fit the images popularized by rappers. More than that, the ways in which Black people can express themselves through this form have narrowed. This is because we could express ourselves in an infinite amount of variations. But America's appetite for racial imagery is confined to a limited set of preferences. This has created an echo chamber of identical narratives coming from almost the entire industry. Black people as violent, drug dealing and/or consuming, hypersexual and intensely materialistic. Of course, there are black people who fit those descriptions, but certainly not as a monolith. And when we look at most images of women they not only are confined to these roles, but subordinated versions of them at that. Think about this; is it a coincidence that the two megastar female MCs of the last decade, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, have capitalized on performances of themselves which center their sexuality, wealth and capacity for violence? These images are stark contrasts to those put forth by female MCs such as Lady of the Rage, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Missy Elliot, Bahamadia or Medusa who defined themselves through the lenses of creativity, intellect, spirituality and lyrical potency. That’s not to say that artists such as Eve and Lil Kim did not coexist with these women, but it does suggest that the avenues of expression for Black women in Hip-Hop have suffered from a severe contraction. This same theory can be applied to the avenues of expression for men in the genre. While there exists more autonomy relative to women, men are for the most part celebrated for their capacity for violence, controlling women and accumulating and spending cash. Of course, there are artists like J. Cole, Wale, Chance the Rapper or Kendrick Lamar who express themselves as valuable because of their ability to move people with their minds and hearts. But for the most part these acts stand out starkly from the pack if not for the fact that their representations of self are exceptions to the status quo. So if this pattern has existed for so long, why is it only now that we find ourselves in a crisis of identity? That crisis can only occur if the psyche is battling over two conflicted images of itself. In the age of #BlackLivesMatter Black people have demanded better for themselves in every arena of human experience. We have demanded that our lives, in their endless array of manifestations, be represented accurately in a meaningful way. Hip-Hop, in theory, should be the engine to create these images (which have only existed for temporary moments in time then disappear). Black people have embraced so many aspects of re-imagining themselves it's incredible to think about. There's been the natural hair movement, an increased awareness of Black entrepreneurship, self-love campaigns, Black nerds consolidating, a reawakening of Black feminism, new explorations of Black parenthood, the narrative of care-freeness especially among "flower-boys" not to mention the reemerging popularity of liberation politics. However, this wave of Black people across all ages who have become inspired to seek new possibilities for themselves have to mute that desire when they want to listen to Hip-Hop music. That's not to say that today there aren't artists who challenge the narrative I'm presenting with their music, or that there isn’t a nuanced discussion to be had about portraying the aspects of street life. However, for the large part, as progressive as Black culture has been in the past few years, Hip-Hop has simply failed to keep up. This becomes clear to me not only when I tune in every Friday to see what new music drops, but when I read articles on Hip-Hop sites or watch shows which are supposed to capture Hip-Hop culture in today's day in age. I simply find myself shocked at the levels of disconnect which seem to exist daily. I was once a fan of the show "Everyday Struggle", a twitter/youtube product which attempts to hit at the desires of internet fans to hear from cultural "experts". But the more I watch the show the more I see that the panelists struggle mightily connecting to the everyday viewer because even at Complex, which is relatively new, the Hip-Hop industry is just so far removed from people on the ground. The show, in my opinion, has yet to develop an identity for itself after nearly two years on the air, and the members of the show spend most of their time indulging gossip and giving their opinions on albums and their commercial success rather than combing through all the aspects of Hip-Hop culture and its impact on people's lives. I also watch "State of the Culture" which is produced by Puff Daddy's Revolt production company, and again I am just taken aback at the conversations which pop up. Where Remy Ma says that she doesn't care if non-black people say nigga and defends Bill Cosby. Or where Joe Budden defends Post Malone, who literally went from being in a metal garage band to switching over to Hip-Hop, dressing himself up as a caricature of Black rappers, making rap music and millions of dollars from it, then telling Hip-Hop publications that he doesn't want to be considered a rapper or a Hip-Hop artist. And this is on a show that is being hailed as possibly the best show on Hip-Hop culture to date. The problems with Hip-Hop journalism is just as glaring as the music, it fails to recognize any Hip-Hop culture outside of that of popular gossip and commercial production. In other words, if it ain't trending or doesn't make money it really isn't Hip-Hop (according to the journalists). The cognitive dissonance goes further than that. We have failed to identify what Hip-Hop music and culture even is anymore. We allow artists who clearly don't want to be labeled as Hip-Hop and certainly don't care about its principles and history to continually benefit from our outlets, platforms and resources. We have failed to adequately cultivate organic spaces for Hip-Hop creation outside of the commercial machine. We've allowed the tradition of the MC to become completely marginalized in the culture. We have allowed the production of music to be confined to what the industry defines as best practice, and our interactions with our favorite artists are mostly limited to their marketing roll outs for projects and for their personal brand. We've failed to control the means of production of our culture, nor do we have any say in where the money goes. Many days it feels to me as if Black people aren't in control of the current climate of Hip-Hop. As Nick Cannon said on Everyday Struggle, "Hip-Hop today is the WWE. It's totally fake." I believe that if you look closely you can see a crisis brewing. One where one of our legends is giving monologues in the oval office and hugging a despotic president. One where rappers are activists one day and then politically destructive the next. One where cultural commentators don't comment on the lives of everyday people. One where people are being inspired to participate in the culture less and less, not just in rapping but in DJing, producing, fashion, graffiti, dance, scholarship, history, etc. We are in a moment where there is little clear direction as to where we are heading, or even, any clear idea of where we are in the world. There are so many things Black people are dealing with, and people across all spectrums of experience, that Hip-Hop just fails at representing. If this is supposed to be our form of creating knowledge about ourselves and the world, we are in large part failing. The result is that we hardly recognize ourselves when we look into the mirrors many days. We claim to hold certain values based on racial ideas of pride and solidarity, but our culture has failed us in providing a way to bring those values into the world. The result is a reality kind of like constantly seeing a reflection of yourself that has clearly beem distorted. Perhaps Hip-Hop will survive this crisis, for it is only created by the awakening of Black people and will most likely end when this revival sort of period is over. Perhaps, on the other hand, a desire for an art form which is evolved enough to capture our desire for human freedom replaces Hip-Hop altogether. Either way, the issues that we deal with now in the culture will not go away just because the words "Hip-Hop" have. This crisis is something we will simply have to get through. I'll leave you with a corny sign off compliments of King Kunta; We gon' be alright! A large part of Hip-Hop’s unique and novel appeal is that it provides us a 180 flip from conventional approaches to music. Hip-Hop ditched harmony and melody to a large extent, in favor of rhythm – subdivisions of time – as a means with which to create sonic meaning. Essentially artists no longer relied on harmony and melody to guide their vocal performance; but rhythm and time. This allowed for lyrics to flourish and rap emerged as the most lyrical approach thus far in the cannon of Black music. One of the great artists in the rap tradition, Lauryn Hill, exemplified her understanding of repetition as a means play with time in her music in a way that allows us participation it creating what the song means to us. Through repetition, Lauryn uses the hook in a literal way: it is a loop, a transition in time which allows us to both reflect on past – via the verse – and project towards future content. Through this the listener becomes hooked into the process of creating meaning, personalizing it for each ear, each soul. In “Lost Ones” by Lauryn Hill, the narrator meditates on a play on words: “Lost ones” in the title, which I would argue is a biblical/spiritual reference, and also the phrase “you just lost one” as she juxtaposes the subject (“Lost Ones”) with her thoughts with regards to parties which she feels has wronged her. Through the first verse Lauryn addresses what seems to be a personal rival (possibly former close friend or love interest?) who essentially was unfaithful to Lauryn. She personalizes herself in the verse with references to herself specifically and other details about Brooklyn. However Lauryn also calls on the source of repetition in advance of the hook; accessing religious references in order to set up a moment of contemplation via repetition. She calls on the line “You might win some, but you just lost one” allowing us to capitalize on the images of personal betrayal and religious references. Through this repetition we are able to begin to draw the lines between the breadcrumbs she’s left us and travel back through time using reflection and pick up additional personal meanings. She uses the hook between two more verses, drawing on more vague references, speaking in riddle using themes of wisdom and experience in the second verse, and universal laws and God itself in the third verse. She ties all of these themes of growth back to creation of our own meaning, describing all of the traps set for her in her personal, social, and spiritual realities using the same line “You might win some but you just lost one”. In doing this she allows people who can relate to her themes struggle - personal betrayal, temptation, feelings of repression/suppression, desperation and salvation – to join into the unifying call against whomever their defeated enemy may be, “You might win some but you just lost one”. A call for all the Lost Ones. Lost Ones - Lauryn Hill Black music has been a vessel for political consciousness throughout our entire history in this strange land. From the cries of freedom carried in the field songs of our enslaved forefathers, to jazz, soul, gospel and even the funk, Black music has always expressed not only our thirst for liberation, but also the conditions of our oppression. Hip-Hop is the latest incarnation of that tradition and is perhaps the most politically aware music in its lineage. Whether it was Queen Latifah, Public Enemy, Mos Def or KRS-One, the OGs of the Hip-Hop game were sure to establish the genre as one that not only showcases our creativity, but also our keen awareness of social, political, economic, spiritual and personal issues that define our experience as Black people. In 2015, Hip-Hop and the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement sparked a new cultural revolution, and while we saw that revolution in full force in 2016 with artists dropping bombshell after bombshell, 2017 was a year in Hip-Hop that was marked by diligence, attention to detail, and a new standard-setting brand of consciousness. Here is a look back on the Top 10 Most Politically Conscious Rap Albums of 2017. 10 - Laila’s Wisdom - Rapsody Laila’s Wisdom opens my list because, just as our first understandings of life come from our mothers, Rapsody established herself as the matriarch and life-giver of the Hip-Hop world in 2017. Laila’s Wisdom weaves political understandings Black Life into themes of womanhood, spirituality, life and love in urban America. At the same time Rapsody asserts herself as a versatile and profound lyricist -- putting on a consistent show of razor sharp rhymes and references from beginning to end. Laila’s Wisdom has a little something for everybody; old and new school sounds and rhyme structures, from the grimy to the melodic, Laila’s Wisdom was perhaps the most solid all-around piece of Hip-Hop to come out of 2017. “Bombs over Baghdad to have a flag to brag ‘bout/don’t make you a Big Boy, ‘cause you have a nice stack” 9 - No Shame - Hopsin I’ve personally never been a fan of Hopsin’s repertoire seeing as his vocal style, flow and beat selection have never captured my imagination. However, I must say Hopsin’s 5th studio album and the 1st on his new self owned label “Funk Volume” has given me new interest in one of Hip-Hop’s most alternative figures. Hopsin took his storytelling to a new level, constructing for his listeners a sonic novel which takes one on an edge-of-your-seat type of ride, detailing a journey he forgoes after being arrested in Australia, falsely accused of kidnapping is white baby mother. No Shame was every bit the thriller Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” was, and also left us with some intimate glimpses into Hopsin’s personal life. “The game is a painful journey/Thank God I never came in early/Had I blown up at 19 or 20?/But damn Hollywood wouldn’t wait to jerk me” 8 - ISSA ALBUM - 21 Savage I know what you may be thinking, “21 Savage in an article about politically conscious rap music?” While this may be the biggest stretch on the list, I want to give credit to 21 for expanding the limits of his content, examining - at times - themes of the trauma and politics that choke black men in the ghettos of America, specifically in Atlanta. ISSA ALBUM was 21 Savage’s attempt to make music with a diverse array of themes, sounds and bar structures, and surprisingly he - at times - succeeds! Look for 21 Savage to grow (slowly) into a more well rounded rapper in the years to come. “Anger in my genes, they used to hang us up with rope/Civil Rights came so they flood the hood with coke/Breakin’ down our people tryna kill our faith and hope/They killed Martin Luther King and all he did was spoke” 7 - State of Mind 2 - Dizzy Wright Dizzy Wright is a youthful veteran of the rap game, and he proves it with the second installation of his “State of Mind” series. From the afrofuturistic cover art to the jazzy ambience of the album Dizzy sets an astral backdrop to his mind-expanding topics and rhymes. Unafraid of exploring the realm of consciousness, Dizzy Wright speaks on street and state sanctioned violence, alkaline diets, the laws of attraction, sacred geometry, the third eye, Black liberation movements, life after death, corporate conspiracy, an eroding Hip-Hop culture, the passage of time… It could literally go on forever. One of my favorite albums of the year, this came as a gift to loyal fans, dropping out of the sky with no announcement or pre-promotion. “Lauryn Hill soul flowin’ through my pen/How you gon’ win if you ain’t right within? (x2)/The Devil is the man who tried to right the sins” 6 - The Never Story - J.I.D. J.I.D.’s debut studio album for J. Cole’s Dreamville Records is sure to cement what will be a fruitful career. Patience has proven to be a virtue for the East Atlanta native who’s rookie contribution is coming at age 27: after this performance there should be no doubt that J. Cole has plucked yet another diamond in the rough. The Never Story gives us a deep look into the life of the young man - as any good debut album should - a life dotted by mass incarceration, political corruption, religious doubt as well as the struggle to stay true in an industry marred with sellouts and hypocrites. For lovers of true counter-culture and tongue twisting, mind-bending lyrical ability and crispy beats, this is the album for you. “Even before grades, going to my brother court date/And I asked my momma what he did but they would never tell me/Then I figured he killed a n***a or got caught for some dope he selling” 5 - Big Fish Theory - Vince Staples It seems as if Vince Staples has finally stepped up to the big stage for good. Big Fish Theory was one of the few concept albums of the year, with an overarching theme and storyline throughout. The Long Beach prodigal son, 23 years old, presents us with a clear picture of what it means to be a big fish in the extremely small pond of Black urban life. Vince’s ability to balance lyricism with catchy hooks and some of the most unique instrumental production you’ll hear in the genre today is both refreshing and remarkable for such a young artist. If he continues to improve on his wordplay and storytelling the sky could be the limit for Vince Staples. I smell a classic somewhere in the waters of this young man’s future. “This thing called love real hard for me/This thing called love is a God to me/And we all just God’s property/So feel free to fulfill The Prophecy” 4 - Everybody - Logic Speaking of concept albums, Logic delivered what is sure to go down in Hip-Hop history as his first truly classic project. Following the story of a man who dies and goes to the waiting room, Everybody is narrated by world-renowned Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, who plays the voice of “God” and navigates Logic’s philosophy behind the meaning of life. The album masterfully walks us through Logic’s battles with his biracial identity, dysfunctional childhood home, struggles with substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and ultimately a breach of faith. At the same time Everybody gives us glimpses into what Logic believes to be humanity’s destiny: an eternal unified human fellowship. This is a must-listen for all lovers of good rap music. “Okay now picture little Bobby just a youngin’ runnin’ round/With his mans, hammer in his hands, feelin’ like the man/Run mutha***a run, before the popo get the gun/Put it to your brain like goddamn!” 3 - DAMN. - Kendrick Lamar In his already legendary career Kendrick has racked up plenty of titles; KDot, The Good Kid, King Kendrick, King Kunta, Mr. 1 through 5 - and now - Kung Fu Kenny! Living up to his new monicker, Kendrick Lamar puts on a martial arts like Hip-Hop clinic with DAMN., kicking dope rhymes and bars consistently throughout while flowing through a variety of sounds and tempos like water. In his most well-rounded album to date KDot stays conscious as ever, examining the true origins of the Black Man as his trials through fear, depression, oppression, lust, doubt and pride beg the question: is it wickedness or weakness? This album is easily the most listenable of the year, with all kinds of pleasing melodies and rhythms. And as for the hypothesis of the project? Well, you decide… “Its nasty when you set us up then bet us up/You overnight big rifles then tell Fox to be scared of us/Gang members or terrorists, et cetera et cetera/America’s reflections of me: that’s what a mirror does” 2 - 4:44 - Jay Z As amazing as Kendrick’s album was, even he had to pay homage to the OG of the rap game, tweeting, “WOW. 4:44. MASTER TEACHER.” on the night of the album’s exclusive Tidal release. I can personally attest that it felt as if Jay Z’s soul crawled around the walls of my room as I blasted the opening track “Kill Jay Z” around midnight of the release date. Hov really did deliver us a million dollars worth of game for just $9.99, discussing ego death, adultery, repentance and regret, the politics and economics of Black Power and the need for racial unity. This album has a couple easter eggs for his Muslim fans and is one of the most mature rap albums to date. “Uh, we gon’ reach a billi first/I told my wife this spiritual s**t really works/Alhumdulillah, I run through ‘em all/Hovi’s home, all these phonies come to a halt” 1 - All-AmeriKKKan Bada$$ - Joey Bada$$ The Bada$$ of the rap game set out to lead the younger generation, telling us that there truly are three K’s and two A’s in “AmeriKKKa”; a full house, a loaded hand to be dealt. Joey fully believes himself to be the youth’s messiah of both rap and consciousness and sets out to prove his point with a scathingly poetic masterpiece reminiscent of the ascension of Tupac or NAS. Each track tackles social and political issues which capture the conundrum of today’s younger generation; so much potential in a world wrought with corruption. With songs like “ROCKABYE BABY” and “TEMPTATION” Joey Bada$$ examines the vices laid at our feet, yet in the rest of the album he spends time educating and reflecting on the entire state of the world we find ourselves growing up in. He comes to a simple conclusion that is evident throughout the entire album: it is time to rebel, and we always have been. “AmeriKKKan Idol, one hand on the bible, other hand on my rifle/I’m aimin’ at my rival, sure to leave him dead on arrival/They say it’s all about survival, never lackin’ the vitals/I came to kill the game and still gave it revival” The Revolutionary mind is both hazard and safe haven. Its functions are both obsolete and absolutely necessary. It yields the power of destruction and creation. Its life course is both chaos and supreme order. It is this paradox which I have found myself for the last 18 months of my life swimming, gasping for breaths of life’s fresh air between the long dives down into the depths of what we call our human condition. To occupy the revolutionary mind is to do no more or less than to drown in the current of our reality, to accept all for what it is, and at the same time reject everything we’ve become. The revolutionary mind is a wind-up toy. It knows not what it is in the beginning stages and the vessel which contains it is equally oblivious as to the fate it will be subjected to as a result of this mind it carries. It starts as a sponge, a young, beautiful, vibrant sponge soaking up the seemingly infinite amount of data the world around it contains. It finds itself lost in the pages of books, mesmerized by the innateness of nature and most of all, obsessed with those things in life that don’t seem quite right. Over time, the latent function of the mind begins to reveal itself – not only to understand this symbolic code we call meaning and the ways in which we create it, but ultimately its job is to put straight those aspects of human life which no longer make sense. The first time something didn’t make sense to me I was 5 years old. My mother, high yellow skinned, bearing her obnoxious 90s style box glasses, belly poking out 9 months pregnant with my second little sister, sat in the living room with me staring silently at our tube television as two towers spat and billowed black smoke from them. The tv anchor said someone had flown a plane into the side of each tower. I told her I was scared and didn’t want to go to school (apparently I couldn’t stop looking out the window for planes in the following days and weeks). Then one of the towers fell. My mother fell into hysterics. My sister was born three days later. In the weeks after that event that everybody was calling “9/11” we sat in front of the tv as every night news anchors and special journalists reported on every aspect of what I was now being called “terrorism”. I must have had some genius capacity to understand things at such a young age. I knew these men came from a land called the Middle East. We watched every night as they informed us as to just how these men were to be tracked down and killed. I vividly recall at the time that the U.S. Government was using a system based on playing cards to rank the most wanted perpetrators of the plot as well as those who were “aiding and abetting” them. On each card would be the face of some brown skinned man, usually bearing a grimace and long black/black and white beard. They called these people radical islamists, jihadists, al-qaeda. The cards started from the deuce and went all the way up to the Ace, a man named Bin-Laden. That name would hang over the first decade or so of my cognitive development. His henchman, who apparently was harboring Bin-Laden and other “Al-Qaeda opperatives” was a man named Sadam Hussein. We watched night in and night out on the t.v. as war ensued. This was my introduction to how the world works – fairy tales and long days spent examining nature included – I learned that weapons of mass destruction were being hidden somewhere (LOL). I asked my mother what weapons of mass destruction were. Bless her heart, she told me that they were bombs that could destroy very big areas of land, whole countries even. I asked her if they were going to drop one on us, she told me no, that our army would protect us and find the man who was hiding these bombs. Again, bless her heart. We watched as more people, brown skinned like me and my sisters, were killed on a nightly basis, some by our own military, many others by a constant barrage of domestic terrorist attacks. Clips of soldiers running around corners, ducking and taking cover, returning fire with menacing looking rifles and more clips of bombs bombs and more bombs flooded the t.v. not only in the coming weeks and months, but years. Global war is the context of my generation’s upbringing. I remember learning about a man named Martin Luther King. We had a poster of him in my house with a long speech written on it, my mom called it the “I Have a Dream” speech. I memorized the last part of the speech and gave it to my 2nd grade class as part of show and tell one day. I wasn’t sure what it was about the words but they seemed to put a part of me to peace. It wasn’t much later that I learned Martin Luther King had to give a speech about his dream because white people in the world don’t treat black people – like us – fairly and that Martin Luther King was sent by God to do right by us. I cried when I learned he was shot in the head. He was my first hero. It wasn’t until middle school though, that I began to form an appetite for revolution. I learned of a man named Kunta Kinte from watching the t.v. with my parents. The VERY FIRST scene of Roots I watched Kunta was jumping into the back of a hay wagon, when I asked my parents where he was running from my father told me he was a slave and was running from his plantation where they forced him to work. When the white men caught him they tied him to a tree and cut off his foot. My dad told me that’s what all of our people went through. I was watching my own history. Upon further watching the series with my parents I insisted on reading the book. My mom told me she had the book in the basement, a thick beige hard cover with brown binding reading plainly “Roots, by Alex Haley” was placed in my hands and I blew the dust off of it (I had always dreamed of doing that). As I read late into the night I found out that Kunta Kinte came from an African tribe called Mandingo and worshipped a God named Allah. Their way of life was fascinating; almost like something of the fairy tales I had used to read. They built cities in the midst of the jungle, they had no police or stores or guns or schools or any of the things that made me anxious about going into the everyday (yes I still to this day can’t stand most stores) and lived happy lives filled with music and dance and the biggest decisions were made by everybody’s grandpas and grandmas who they called “the elders”. I was heartbroken when Kunta was captured in the middle of his manhood rite of passage; I almost gagged when the conditions of the middle passage were described. In fact, I had to stop reading. Not much later than that a Hurricane called Katrina hit New Orleans and I particularly remember how distraught my father, originally from the Mississippi Delta, was about the fact that black people were being left to die without food and water. One morning we watched as a helicopter camera flew over New Orleans, bodies were floating in the water and old people were left to die of thirst, disease, and starvation on their front porches. I remember the same military which had invaded Iraq and later Afghanistan marching into New Orleans. My mother screamed at the t.v. the next night when they called these people “refugees” and stopped them from crossing a bridge into safety with a line of men brandishing more rifles. Around this time the world stopped making sense to me. The revolutionary mind though, does not come into its full fledgeness until it decides for itself that all of these things about the world cannot be right, and – this is the key – that something MUST be done to stop whatever it is that makes humans fly planes into buildings, bomb people’s homes, fill streets with soldiers. However, one thing I’ve noticed about most others throughout history who have had minds others deemed “revolutionary” is that they don’t quite get the point of action until this madness the world has been plunged into rips something from their very own lives. One day after my middle school had gave all of the 6th grade boys “the talk” I came home to my father looking as if he had news that somebody in the family had died. He sat me down and explained to me that he was not my biological father. My world crashed. I’ve actually blocked out most of the memory from my mind to this day. After hearing the words the most I can remember is sobbing over a plate of pancakes, eggs and sausage (my parents were smart to comfort me with breakfast for dinner) while mindlessly watching Spongebob on our mini t.v. I later learned that he was from the Southside of Chicago, his name was Donald Douglas, my mother had no picture of him, he only called once when I was a toddler and though he was a brilliant legal mind in Chicago and eventually working for a man named Don Nickerson who would go on to be on the Iowa Supreme Court, ultimately the conditions of the ghetto from which he had come had infected him with the disease of addiction and depression. To this day I have not seen his face, not even a photograph. That was the source of my true pain, that loss, knowing that the madness of the world had stolen from me what was supposed to be a sacred part of my life’s story. Stolen from me – and him – simply because we are Black. As I grew older and started to deliberate as to what I wanted to do with my life I found that this mind of mine was well suited to do a great number of amazing things. I could do geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. I could write stories, long and short, fiction and non-fiction, as well as poetry. As well as I could write I could read and understand the vast complexities of the worlds of authors such as Rowling, Konigsburg, Hemmingway, Bacon, Baldwin, Silko, Shakespeare and Voltaire. I could observe, analyze, and successfully experiment on the infinite repetition of the physical sciences – drinking in biology, chemistry and physics as if they were gospel. All of these things made me a prime candidate for scholarships to virtually any school in the world. My mind had created for me the opportunity to prosper to the fullest of my heart’s desires in the world, the only limitation being my own imagination. Originally I wanted to go to the University of Iowa to study journalism and report on the destruction that was and still is occurring in the Middle East and now North and West Africa. I was told I wanted a death sentence. So I chose Political Science, much to the pleasure of my glowing family. When it became clear in my first month or so of Poli Sci classes that the area of study is ultimately framed in a way that attempts to make sense out of the utter chaos that our political system rather than condemning it for what it is, I switched to Sociology, a study which would at least allow me to examine the decay of society. Even within Sociology though I found that for every academic studying and arguing that there is social decay, this school of thought also harbored those thinkers who engineered and continue to engineer the destruction of my people and other innocent people’s worldwide. This was not a school I could in good conscious form my identity around: I refuse to make a home with those who perpetuate oppression. In my search for purpose my mind became infected with doubt, with sorrow, with pain, with anger, with despair. My first venture into the world of love, while being in the short term an exhilarating ride, ended in utter failure and heartbreak. All these things forced me further and further into the cave of my own depression. When I couldn’t afford to be depressed, I became anxious. I began to doubt my own cause for justice. My faith in myself and any sort of higher purpose waivered. I withdrew myself from the commitments I had made towards liberation – my fraternity, the literary magazine I had been an editor of, even my studies, which I had once cherished, all went to the wayside. All in all I had a complete shutdown. A revolutionary hiatus. Ultimately I have come to the conclusion that until I re align this mind of mine with the higher power – the one that carries us towards love, peace and unity – and align my energies to those things which will destroy the forces of destruction, I will not in myself find peace, unity, and love. This is my return to the world, stronger, smarter, and more indignant than ever. The world tried to extinguish my flame. No longer a flame, which consumes that which it burns, billows disgusting black smoke as a byproduct and ultimately burns itself out, I am now pure light. I come from the cosmos, I am a byproduct of existence itself, and there is no darkness that can put me out. This week is about reclaiming my voice, speaking truth to power, and setting the course of justice and righteousness, the marathon that we call the fight for liberation. I leave you with the words of that great freedom fighter Assata Shakur, “It is our duty to fight. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” This is no piece of art. This collection of words is not being written to entertain, impress, or provide any benefit to you other than to describe a place where I currently reside, and reach out to those who happen to be living here with me. The more time I spend here the more it becomes clear that this place has no age; its as if it exists outside of time, as if the world revolves everywhere else, but here clocks are broken. You may live the same moment, minute, hour, day, week, year, over and over again. Sometimes time skips ahead to show you something, then lurches back to a period you'd thought you'd long ago already tied up nicely and shoved under your metaphorical bed. Sometimes time doesn't exist altogether and you're left alone in some weird lifeless void waiting for the sun to rise again. There are thousands, if not millions of people here living with you at this moment right now but for some reason or another as much as you'd like to it's as difficult for you to find another as it is for anybody else to find you. This place, is rock bottom.
After having spent the entire beginning of my adult life here I have to say its not as bad as one might think. Of course, you do have to get used to the constant feeling that there's not a good reason to live your life, the persistent feeling of grief and sorrow, the hollow emptiness that it means to be alone and the pitiful image of yourself that most people have come to form in their minds. Don't get me wrong, those things definitely suck. On top of that you really do miss the place where you lived your old life. The place where you got up on time everyday, when you ate well and actually cared about your body. When your friendships were easy and relating to your family was even easier. When your main worries were of the usual "what do I do with my day" variety. You didn't cling to your bed as if your life depended on it. Or consume narcotics like water. Mundane responsibilities didn't prompt emotional breakdowns and you certainly didn't worry about the very nature of your existence on a regular basis. I am here to tell you though, that Rock Bottom isn't a place where you go just to suffer. The times we live in are more than hard: they are damn near impossible. So impossible that the actual society is beginning implode from within itself. I don't think I need you to do more than look on the news to see what I'm talking about, and those who reside with me at Rock Bottom know exactly what I mean. We as people all share in this reality, a reality that for the first time (that we KNOW of) in human history is being shared at a global level. For a good deal of us, we are able to consume this reality, the good and the bad, and to some degree sustain our very being off of it. We are conscious life moving within a body, and a lot of us are able to handle the life we are currently living in a way that is at least quasi-sustainable. But what is there for those who can't? Not don't want to or just won't, but cant. Rock Bottom is the home for those people. It is the place we go when our very being begins to reject our reality from our bodily existence. If you've come to Rock Bottom, know that it's not because of anything except the fact that you were trying to live a life not meant for you. In my case I came here to cope with the reality of racism, the father that the world killed before I ever got to meet him, the abuse I underwent as a child, and the fact that I was given school as the thing that would deliver me from my pain when in fact all it did was attempt to take my broken soul and turn it into another product for the society to feed off of. This is NOT my life though. And when I started to realize that I began a journey that quite honestly I'm not sure I'd have signed up for with the understanding of where it would take me in the search for my true self. At first I stopped being able to get myself up to go to school. It was like one day school became this monster that just kept asking me to feed myself to it. I began to see class for what it was doing to me: mashing my beautiful unique mind into a westernized computing system instead of allowing me to be the full majestic human being that resides inside me begging to be teased out. After this I couldn't go anymore. I put my self worth into other things. My fraternity, extracurricular positions, the party scene, drugs, girls, anything to give me the satisfaction from life that was quickly slipping through my fingers. You spend so much time in this part of Rock Bottom until you begin to lose the energy to even pretend as if life is something you are extracting joy from. I began to sit in my room, alone for days, smoking and listening to music and hoping that one day the reality of the world would just change so I could come out and be who I wanted to be. It just seemed to me that if I came out to the world and told everybody what I TRULY wanted to do I would be vilified for it. My family would be angry and my friends would judge me and be hurt that I didn't want to do what they wanted to do anymore with my life. Sure enough my parents thought I was crazy for wanting to drop out and my friends began to wear seriously concerned faces, like they could see that I was beginning to turn towards a different direction. I was recommended to a therapist and they said I had depression. After a few trips I stopped going, NOT because I think therapy is dumb or anything, but I wasn't in a place where I was even comfortable enough to come to terms with what I was actually living through. Even though I knew I had to get out of it, I knew I had to do it my way. If you're living in Rock Bottom, this is probably the case for you. So, still I was stubborn. I began to say fuck it and take risks. I tripped LSD and saw the other side of time. Went to Colorado and saw the Mountains. Went to a Chance the Rapper concert. Went to Chicago on a whim to see my friend perform. I saw Solange perform. Soon enough you realize what's worth living for and what's not. After enough time in Rock Bottom you begin to realize what IS worth living for, and what makes you miserable. This is a blessing, not a curse, and curiously enough is the key to making it out. I realized what I always knew from the beginning. I love God, I love music, I love black people, I love freedom and nature and exploring, and of course I love my family and friends. Those are the things worth living for. Everything else is either a means to get closer to the things you love, or simply just noise. Even the things we've been conditioned to think are important. After that simple realization, even though getting back to a place where I can operate in a normal and healthy way is a long journey, it's much easier for me to take care of my body and responsibilities when I know that its gonna allow me more time to do the things I love. Rock Bottom, or depression as the clinic would call it, is simply a place you go when your spirit decides its had enough and begins to force yourself to search for a life that's going to be more sustainable, peaceful, and joyous than the trajectory you've currently put yourself on. It feels real shitty, trust me I know, but that's just the feeling of ripping away abuse and psychological poison away from your being. Its the feeling of healing. If I can leave you with one metaphor that works perfectly for me to this day it comes from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Towards the end of the first book/movie Harry and the gang find themselves stuck in what is called Devil's Snare. It's actually a lot like Rock Bottom; its dark, slimy, terrifying, and chokes the hell out of you as you scream seemingly into your own death. But actually when you just relax and let go of the need to control you slip right on through into the next stage of your exploration. For Harry, Ron, and Hermoine what was on the other side would change their lives FOREVER. I hope your journey yields the same results. As for me, I'm on the way out. But before I left I thought I'd leave behind this note of encouragement and understanding. I don't know where I'm going, but it literally has to be up. I love you. -Matt Hey guys! If you haven't yet, please read Courtney Baumann's piece "FERENTZ DIDN'T TAKE A STAND WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE," in the Daily Iowan (http://daily-iowan.com/2017/09/28/baumann-ferentz-didnt-take-a-stand-when-he-should-have-2/). It's a fine example of a piece that whitesplains Black Lives out of a narrative completely. Sorry, not sorry.
Below is a copy of the email I submitted to the Daily Iowan Letter to the Editor personal email which contains the entire reply instead of the 300 word reply the website forces you to send. Enjoy! (And Go Hawks!) Hello, My name is Matthew Bruce, I am a Black student here at the University of Iowa, and this is my reply to the opinion piece titled "BAUMANN: FERENTZ DIDN'T TAKE A STAND WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE". This is a 500 word version of the 300 word version I sent online. I am sending this one via email because I feel very passionately about Kirk Ferentz's comments and its implications on Black Lives Matter, The University of Iowa, The Athletic Department, and the First Amendment Rights of Student Athletes (particularly Black) at the University of Iowa. It is also, if I may say myself, a very well written 500 words. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RE: BAUMANN: FERENTZ DIDN’T TAKE A STAND WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE Kirk Ferentz, when asked Tuesday whether he would support any of his players should they choose to use the National Anthem to protest police brutality and all other consequences of institutional racism answered, in a number of words, no. Courtney Baumann’s opinion piece on Ferentz’s comments surrounding the topic was, while well intentioned, still ignoring the most important part of this entire story which is that in all of this, University of Iowa Employee(s) are using their position(s) to entrench the legacy of white supremacy in America by suggesting that Black Athletes should somehow have to sacrifice their right to free speech and expression when they hit the field. “This is the one time we put everything aside. We all dress alike, act alike, and we’re trying to do the same thing,” said Ferentz Tuesday. This language is drenched in the history of racism and sport in America; which is ironic as Ferentz was somehow trying to convey that sport has been an arena of inclusion historically. The truth is that historically black athletes have been forced to surrender their identities, their passion and (most importantly) their desire for meaningful change in the name of being able to compete. “I read this this morning that sports and politics are intertwined. I see the world a lot differently, I guess,” Ferentz said. To put it differently; you’re here to play football and ONLY to play football. Ferentz went on to suggest that racism was an issue akin to say, cancer, and that if athletes wanted to make a difference they should “use a platform where it makes a difference,” such as voting or community activism. Let us not lose the gravity of these statements. This is the opinion of a high level Athletic Official at the University of Iowa - the highest paid state employee in Iowa - and suggests one of two things: 1) That the Athletic Department and University of Iowa truly don’t believe football is an appropriate platform to promote narratives of change or 2) It doesn’t believe police brutality and the condition of black life in America are issues that need changing. It is obvious though, that the Athletic Department and the University use the football program as a platform to convey messages about politics and society: from farmers, to breast cancer, the children’s hospital and even your local public service heroes (Nebraska heroes game) there are plenty of causes which the Athletic Department deems worthy enough of dedicating time and resources towards recognizing and advancing: Black Lives Matter is simply not one of them. And neither are any movements, gestures, or behaviors that would suggest that racism is a problem which is killing black people and needs to be addressed. It is not that Kirk Ferentz, the Athletic Department and the University Community find themselves on the wrong side of history or politics, but that they all guarantee Black Lives will continue to not Matter. Baumann said that Kirk Ferentz failed to take a stand. I would argue that he very clearly did. Matthew Bruce May 11th
Today Marco finally asked me to prom! I pulled up to my driveway today and tried my best to act surprised to find him standing there grinning holding a Pokémon board game, balloons decorated as poke balls and a big sign with “I choose YOU as my prom date” scrawled across it in his cute scraggly handwriting. Amy gave me the heads up text a couple days ago that Marco had asked her for help planning the whole thing. He even had already came up with the idea on his own which is SO cute, and Amy had the low down on when and where he’d ask me so I was sure to come home from soccer practice today freshly showered and in an outfit cute enough to post Instagram pictures in, but not TOO cute, know what I mean? Anyways, I’ve been running through the whole day, planning out each step, each moment, picture, laugh, smile, kiss and hopefully – HOPEFULLY – I’ll end my fairytale with finally losing the big V. That is, if Marco is down for it, but that’s the biggest problem. The thing is he seems to think that we’re pretty much friends now. When we met back in middle school at Amy’s birthday party he made it clear to me he kinda dug me. He followed me around (though he didn’t think I noticed), laughed his cute little lopsided laugh when he found out my favorite snack is ice cubes, and mustered up the courage to ask me if he could message me on Facebook as his light brown face blushed dark maroon. He’d been after me for a while, and I always turned him down. We’d flirt here and there, but the butterflies that would take over my stomach when he’d call me pretty or say I was just adorable as Pikachu – my favorite of Pokémon – made me nauseous to be honest, so I always avoided indulging those conversations; I didn’t want to get his hopes up, I liked the guy. As a friend. That is until I started to notice that the butterflies were being replaced by this tingling sensation that would start at my inner thighs and rise through my hips into my lower stomach. Last summer we went to the pool with our group of friends and I happened to catch a glimpse of his back rippling with muscles as he bent over to take his shirt off. Amy nudged me, smiling and said, “Girl, don’t get yourself in trouble,” with a sly grin. After that I couldn’t resist my obvious attraction to him. I’d flip my hair when he asked me “what’s up?” in the hallway as he passed by, his finely cut arms protruding from the “EAST HIGH” football jersey he’d sport every Friday before game day. I’d flitter my eyes, bite my lip and say stuff like, “If we weren’t friends I’d say that jersey makes you look kinda sexy.” One day he smiled and replied, “Well if we weren’t friends I’d think you were hitting on me.” We’ve been flirting ever since but lightly you know like friends do when they’ve known each other for so long. I knew he didn’t have a lead on a prom date so I started dropping hints that I was looking for one too, and here we are now! We haven’t even made out yet, so I’m kinda behind in my plans but Amy and I think if the cards are played just right I can hit the one-night-homerun on prom night, so fingers crossed! May 27th Prom was a disaster. Well, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. It was cute and everything. My dress was a sequin rainbow kinda thing that Marco picked out. It was covered in cool colors – blue, purple, green and deep magenta – and had a black sash across the waist and Marco chose a sharp light blue tie with a purple vest for his black tux. We got countless compliments all night, our pictures got hundreds of likes, dinner was great, the dance was even better. Marco seemed like he had a great time. We got home and immediately we both instinctively knew to head to the bedroom. He and I had been exchanging passionate eye contact all night. I tried to send telepathic messages to him throughout the night and hoped he’d get the gist. Anyways, we started making out, he picked me up and put me on the dresser and pulled my dress off. I started to unbutton his tux. In my head I imagined myself slowing working my way down the buttons teasing him and showing him how sexy I could be. But like most things I plan my own affinity for awkwardness ruined that. Instead I ended up ripping his tux open like a cavewoman and trying to pull his vest over his head. He laughed and told me it had to be unbuttoned too. I’d have felt embarrassed if I wasn’t getting so wet. Before I knew it we were both on the bed in our underwear. He reached in my panties and my mind began to race: what if I wasn’t wet enough? What if he thinks my vagina is ugly? What if he thinks I smell? What if I’m not good enough at it? What if he’s too big? What if he’s too small? What if it hurts too much? Do I moan? Do I talk dirty to him? What do I say? Then his voice snapped me back to reality; “Uhh Rita, I’m not an expert but I think you need to relax a little bit.” “Huh?” The words hopped out of my mouth before I could think of something more coherent. “You’re closed shut. Like, really tight. I can’t get my fingers in…” Blood rushed to my head so fast I thought I might faint. He said I didn’t look too good and then said we should probably get ready for after prom. I told him that was a good idea and tried to hide my shame as we pulled on the clothes we’d packed for the lock-in at the highschool. The after prom was cool, he seemed to not care about our little episode earlier, won me a prize at one of the carnival games and kissed me on the cheek goodnight when he dropped me off. But I can’t shake the feeling of shame. Is something wrong with me? June 10th I’m starting to think Marco doesn’t wanna have sex with me after all. We picked up fine after the prom incident. He said we should take things slower. We made out a couple times in his car, last week he gave me head for the first time and I returned the favor. He said I was pretty damn good and I have to say I didn’t mind it. But he didn’t finish so I started to get worried he might not be enjoying it. I asked him if it was good and he said yes but he has a hard time when he gets nervous. But when I started again he just got soft so I started to think he was lying. Today he came over and we watched this Indian Soap Opera. It’s kinda cute that he watches it with me even though he doesn’t speak a lick of Sanskrit and has to ask every 5 minutes what’s going on. I’m starting to think he might only be doing that to get in my pants though. Anyways we started making out on the couch after some time. We went through the motions of taking our clothes off, feeling each other up, giving and getting head. I felt the best I ever had and was ready to finally get the monkey on my back. Finally he kinda just pulled away from me when the kissing died down. I looked at him for a moment to see what was going on before I finally asked, “Well?” “I didn’t bring a condom,” he coolly replied looking me in my eyes. “Why would you do all that and not bring a condom?!” I didn’t mean for the words to come out as a shout but they did anyway. He seemed kinda taken aback. “I just didn’t know you were ready is all…” I would have maybe gotten madder – I mean we were doing everything BUT that – but he seemed genuinely hurt because his eyes lowered away from mine and he started to put his clothes back on. I told him it was okay and offered him some bread and hummus, his favorite. I don’t know why, but it seems like things are starting to go downhill fast. June 18th It finally happened but at this point I have no idea what to think. At least it’s over I guess. We were watching Netflix in the basement again, this time it was House of Cards, one of his favorites. We were on the third episode of the night, and HoC is one of those 40 minute per episode shows so I was getting kinda drowsy and quite frankly bored. We were snuggled up under a blanket on the couch again and I could feel him getting hard on my lower back for a while. I didn’t think he was going to act on it. He surprised me though, maybe he’d been waiting the whole time for me because usually I’m the one who acts first, but I think he just got bored. He started kissing on my neck. As disgruntled as I’ve been I can’t turn off my own biology. His kisses made my blood begin to rush and I immediately began to snap out of my drowsiness. I turned over and I don’t know, everything kinda happened so perfectly and so fast… Before I knew it he was putting a condom on. At this point I was relaxed, ready, but not as excited as I imagined I’d be. When he put it in though my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I can’t describe the feeling, it was so…foreign. After the initial pain I began to understand why everybody seemed to love sex so much. I felt like I was flying. I think at one point I grinned my big ass goofy grin at him and he kinda half laughed, half bit his lip. Everything was going fine, then he pulled out and asked me to turn over. I don’t know what it was about that, but it made me nervous. He must have seen it on my face, “Is that a problem?” He asked me. “No. No it’s just that…Things were just going so well.” “Well we don’t have to switch if you don’t- “No, it’s okay.” I turned over for him. We started back again and he started really going to town. The sensation became so strong that I squeezed my eyes shut and bit the couch arm. He started pushing me over the edge of the couch and my head began to lightly bang on the wall the couch was next to. If I could have said words at the moment I’d have asked him to stop but there wasn’t any stopping once we’d started. I heard him let out a huge groan, like something was slowly, agonizingly being pulled out of his body. He stopped, I heard him panting behind me. I kept my eyes closed as I tried to catch my breath and process everything. I felt him kiss the back of my neck and when I turned around he was already on his way to the bathroom. I rolled over to my back and felt something dripping from my legs onto the couch. I looked down to find blood trickling down. Then it hit me; I really just lost my virginity. This time it wasn’t thoughts that rushed to me but raw feelings, and all of them at once. Joy, confusion, excitement, but most of all, fear. He came back out of the bathroom with his pants back on and something about that bothered me. “You’re not going to just leave are you?” I barked at him. “Of course not,” there was that soft, insulted look again. “Unless you want me to.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. The waterworks were rushing to my eyes faster than I could fight them back. I started sobbing. “My cherry popped,” I managed squeeze the words out. He looked at me and I could see all the emotions hit him too. Especially the confusion, maybe a little concern, and definitely fear as well. His face scrunched up for a moment as he processed everything, peering into my eyes. “Well it’s okay right? You’re okay?” Why was he asking me this? Of course I was okay. That’s what happens when you lose your virginity, right? Then why was I crying? I couldn’t answer him in time. “I can stay the night with you if you want,” the words were convincing, as if he’d kinda figured out what was going on and how to deal with it. “Only if you want,” I’d stopped crying but the words still lacked any kind of strength. He came back to the couch, climbed under the blanket and said, “Cool cause this nigga Frank Underwood raw as hell and I don’t have Netflix.” He laughed, probably thinking the joke might make me feel better. That’s how he always dealt with stuff like this. Normally I’d think that was cute, this time it felt, I don’t know, childish. I thought it’d be more special. That we’d spend time talking about how long we’d known each other, liked each other. All the memories, the feelings, the thoughts and events leading up to now, I thought we’d go through it all together. I didn’t know how to tell him how disappointed I was, how afraid I am that I’ve just thrown a piece of myself away forever. And for what? How could you be so dumb David? I began to squirm in my two-foot-wide greyhound bus seat. The most uncomfortable feeling in all the world is perhaps the dreadful moments, minutes or hours of agony as one sits in the messy diaper of his own mistake, unable to change the already set in motion course of action. The city of Chicago has always called to me; it is the birthplace of Donald Thomas, deadbeat father of David Redd. My father left me very little other than his hazel-green eyes which shine like glistening cataracts when filled with hysteria, a blanket with a doe on it gazing out into the snow covered forest, and the idea of his home city. I was never even so much as humored with a picture of him, and as for all the things he did leave me I am left with only the trust that my mother would not lie to me about his eyes, my blanket, or his hometown. Even that left the grinding feeling of doubt in a young David’s mind, after all, did she not lie to me when she let me call another man “dad” for seven years? Nevertheless I clung onto those things as if they were really my own. Peered with blank pride through the bathroom mirror into my hazel eyes every morning searching for his soul. Never let the blanket leave my side, even when I moved out (that is until I burned a hole into the corner of it one night smoking weed). And that city, I loved it from afar as if I walked its very streets. I’d spend summer afternoon after summer afternoon in my living room with the tv turned to WGN as the cubs struggled to play baseball with better teams. I’d run around with a sock and back-scratcher in hand, pretending not to be Sammy Sosa or Starlin Castro, but David Redd, his own baseball rock star (I’d later learn my dad was a Sox fan). I listened to Kanye, to Lupe, to Common and later to Chance, to Vic Mensa, Alex Wiley, Mick Jenkins, Kembe X and the likes. I would pick up on the subtle draw and vernacular of my Chicago friends I’d met in college. I didn’t ever tell them I secretly envied them, even sought to be like them, though I’m sure they knew anyways. For the longest time I wanted to be that baseball player, so one day he could look up at a billboard, see my face, and go through the lengths to find me as I had done for him. But David Redd was small, skinny, and he let people tell him that – despite league championships and all-star awards – small skinny kids didn’t play pro ball. I went to college, I wanted to make money, and I wanted my name to be known. I studied political science; someday I’d travel to Chicago’s southside and lead a movement. I’d knock on doors day in and day out handing out pamphlets and fighting the man until one day I’d knock on his door and he’d cry at the joy that his creation had become. I could have been either of those things perhaps, but I would not have found myself. So when my fraternity brother’s debut album came out and his release concert was announced of course I was head over heels to head to Chicago to see him. I love my brother of course, though I had barely spent any time with him, but really David was just looking for an excuse to finally lay eyes on the canvas where the idea of himself had begun to take shape. “I’ll be on the bus tomorrow,” I eagerly told him. 4 hours into a miserable ride on a bus with three babies, one bathroom (which I had to set right next to), dreary gray seats of which not one was empty, I get a message from him. He’s partying tonight. He won’t be responsible and doesn’t think it wise for him to be responsible for me. He’s trying to see a girl he likes and honestly, I’ll be a burden to him while I’m here. That’s fine. I reply. It’s my fault for being such a cluck. For getting my hopes up so high. How could David be so dumb, to head to Chicago impromptu with no confirmation. Idiot. David you idiot. I’m not sure how this story ends. I’m sure I will find a friend to stay with. I’m sure I will still see the concert and have a great time. I’m sure this will be something I look back on and smile. I am sure when my mom finds out she will flip. Perhaps she won’t because she knows in my heart how long I’ve been trying to come, that I’ve been so eager I’d let David the little boy make decisions instead of my adult self. I’m sure I’ll forgive myself someday. But what I’m most sure of is that I won’t find my father. Not today. Not ever. The alleyways tucked between the crevices of concrete that make up Des Moines are sanctuaries for hidden life. There’s an alley just off E. 14th ave, which connects east to South, crammed between an old Barbershop with Supreme Cuts splashed across the top in funky, white and blue cursive and a new Thai restaurant which nobody – or at least nobody in the neighborhood – seems to eat at. Two blocks away from the high school, four blocks away from the old brick-caste junior high school, this alley was among the East side’s most trafficked sanctuaries; it was the shady pasture adjacent the watering hole. The dark pass way teemed with the comings of goings of life; pushers clad in busted jeans and a wife beat, skinny itchy fiends would come dressed the same way, hoodlums cloaked in reds and blues and blacks and greens came from far and near to battle over territories, painters came armed with can in hand and plastered their souls onto walls in ghetto cursive, and the laughter of children at play seemed to rise above all the other sounds of this urban Serengeti.
The summer sun stood tall in the sky, beating down on the city with a heat that would be multiplied time and time over again by the unforgiving black concrete. The air in the alley was damp with the smell of wet trash wafting by, and chilled by the near constant shade it was subjected to. From the end of the alley came an innocent shriek which pierced the stagnant mid-day air. A little girl darted into the alley, her gait was pigeon toed and as she covered her hair with her arms her little pink Dora tank top rose above her belly button. Behind her a menacing boy, perhaps her elder by a year or two, came bearing down on her in full sprint brandishing a bright green water gun. “Nick!” She screamed, stopping to turn and face her torturer. “Mama said not to get my hair wet!” The boy, still holding the water gun to the top of her head, let a smile befit for the Grinch creep across his dirty brown face. The girls lip quivered, the angst had become obvious in her face. She was relieved to have a break from the humiliating stream of water he had been dousing her with and yet she knew the relief was to be short lived. That stare down must have lasted two eternities. The girls eyes watering with annoyance as she ran her fingers through her tangled hair, the boy’s face glowing with the power he held in his hand. Finally, the boy broke the tension, “Well you better run then nigga!” He half laughed, half shouted. The water began again. The girl began to wail as tears streamed down her eyes. Her foot caught on a stray two by four on the alley floor and now the boy stood over her, triumphant in his raucous laughter. “Hey!” I yelled. The boy froze in his tracks. He did not lift the water gun. His eyes fixed on my own trying to assess this new, unanticipated challenge. The girl rose to her feet, vengeance painted in a snarl across her face, and raised her two hands in a closed fist above his head. She brought down with all her might and rage a clubbing blow onto the boys head. It was his turn to fall to the ground in a pitiful wailing heap. She stood over him for only a moment, “Just wait till I tell momma!” She cried and darted out the alleyway as quickly as she had come. |
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October 2018
Matt BruceViva DSM!! |