However, I’ve realized that sometimes, well-meaning, really nice White people (of which there are many, by the way) want Black folks to talk to them in non-angry, non-confrontational, and patient ways about Black cultural issues they don’t understand.

So I wondered if it might be useful for me to write blog posts that break racial things down for good White folks who mean no harm—and who either have Black friends or are in the midst of acquiring friendships with Black people– and are just trying to navigate these racial waters that ironically (and to me, bewilderingly) have become far more treacherous since the election of our first Black president.

Sidebar: I use “race” as a shorthand because that word usually means “Black” or “People of Color” to White people. But really, “race” is not a real, like, biological thing. It does not exist except in people’s minds. What I actually mean when I say “race” is “culture.”

I hadn’t even planned to post again this week, but I’ve noticed the online furor on Black social media concerning Governor Jan Brewer’s pointing her finger very close to President Barack Obama’s face. The response from White folks? Some are upset, but I get the impression they don’t really understand why we African Americans are so troubled. Some of us are even enraged.

So I thought that it might be time to write a Teachable Racial Moment post.

Ok, here goes: If you are wise, you will not ever put your finger–or your whole hand– in a Black person’s face, unless you know you want to immediately engage in a knock down, drag out, fight-to-the-concrete physical brawl. It’s actually a well-known signal for “let’s fight right this moment” in the Black community. When I say “ever” I mean not in this present lifetime, or even after death, if you encounter another Black angel in Heaven. Because that angel is still liable to get into it with you and risk being de-winged.

I don’t know when the finger point in the face became such a grave insult to Black folks, but it has been for at least fifty years. And what does the gesture mean anyway?  It means derision. It means disrespect. And above all, it means power to the pointer.

Sidebar: Have you ever seen a mother (of any cultural background) in the mall with her disobedient toddler? She finally gets exasperated and leans down and begins to scold the child—by pointing her finger in his or her face. And what happens? The toddler starts crying, and then gets it together and starts behaving better. Thus, the finger point in the face is not a gesture between equals. She who does the pointing is establishing herself as a superior to the person being pointed at.

Okay, and now, I’m about to reveal a Racial Secret. Are you ready? I’m going to put this in italics so you really get it.

Because the finger point gesture establishes superiority, the gesture is even worse if a White person does it to a Black person, due to the history in this country of White supremacist violence and cultural demeaning of Black folks.

Nice Non-Racist White folks, this may seem silly to y’all. And I get that. Right now, you may be saying, “Dang, Black folks got too many rules! It’s so hard to keep up with y’all!” That’s true. I won’t deny it. So many rules, even I have a hard time keeping up.

But consider that, individually, we all have rules that help create a space in which we are happy.

For example, I despise egg whites. (No racial pun intended here, I promise.) I will eat whole scrambled eggs willingly, or baked into cookies, cakes, etcetera, but if given a boiled egg, I will only eat the yolk. The thought of an egg white omelet is one that moves me almost to physical pain.  It’s so slimy and disgusting.

So one day, I was visiting my mama and she was making potato salad. And she was chopping up boiled egg whites to mix into the potato salad. Now I live to eat my mama’s potato salad. Nobody makes it better. So I was watching her chop up those egg whites and I felt tears come to my eyes, because I knew I wasn’t going to eat that potato salad with those egg whites in it. I was so disappointed and I felt really betrayed, too.

Mama looked up and saw my face and said quietly, “Honi, you know I already made your potato salad without the whites, darling. It’s sitting in the refrigerator right now.”

That’s what I mean.

Mama could have said, “Look, get over it. I’m not making two separate potato salads to please your rusty grown behind. What am I, your personal chef?” But she didn’t. And just like she knows I won’t eat egg whites, I know she despises the dark meat of chicken and I’d never try to serve a chicken thigh to her. It’s these little things that lead to understanding between two people.

And this leads us back to Governor Jan Brewer. After she pointed her finger in President Obama’s face she followed up in a media interview by saying she “felt threatened” by him. But remember when I said above that the finger point in the face was both an aggressive act and one attempting to establish superiority?

If anyone felt threatened, it would be President Obama, threatened by Governor Brewer’s attempt to not only belittle him, but also because he probably suspected that later, she’d try to flip the racial script on him. Which she most certainly did.

Here’s that flipped script:  she, the Little Helpless White Lady, felt afraid of him, a Big Ole Scary Black Man. (Refer to the film, Birth of a Nation if you aren’t familiar with this tired script. It’s only a bit more tired–and dangerous–than the Big-Breasted Loving Black Mammy Who Lives To Take Care of White Folks Kids With No Pay script in Gone With The Wind.)

So, let me get this straight.

Governor Brewer felt afraid of President Obama. She felt threatened by him. After she poked her finger in his face and attempted to humiliate him. And let’s not forget this was going on in front of cameras.

Yeah, okay. I completely believe her.

This flipped racial script of Governor Brewer is very old, and has several versions, but it has proven useful throughout the years for the shell game of White supremacy, as when a Black man was lynched whenever a White woman accused him of looking at her funny.

I’m not playing here mentioning the funny look. It was the unofficial law of “reckless eyeballing” created by White southerners, and many a southern Black man swung at the end of a rope for committing that supposed crime. The case of Emmitt Till was a variation of “reckless eyeballing,” because he whistled at a White woman and ended up murdered.

Just because President Obama doesn’t talk about that racial script doesn’t mean he isn’t well aware of our nation’s troubled history concerning White women and Black men, which is why he walked away from Governor Brewer. I’m pretty sure that, as a Black man, he was angered by her culturally transgressive act, but he had the presence of mind to get himself together before he broke all the way fool on the tarmac with that lady and not only ended up in jail, but went down in history as 1) the first Black president and 2) the first president who physically assaulted a woman in public.

But he saved himself, because President Obama is an Old School Brother. And it is never acceptable for an Old School Brother to hit a woman, whether or not she has committed an act of aggression. And let me tell you that you don’t really want to know what would have happened if Governor Brewer had pointed her finger in the face of another Black man—not an Old School Brother but one of these Young Knuckleheads With No Sense.

Eh, Lord, it would have been so ugly. And that’s all I’m going to say.

Polite, kind, respectful, self-controlled, and full of common sense: that’s how Old School Brothers get down. And by the way, that’s why I really adore them. And that’s why, despite the fact that President Obama hasn’t been a perfect leader (at least in my opinion), as a Sister, I feel extremely proud of him. And I bet Mrs. Obama does, too.

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But then, I noticed there were a few people who espoused so-called radical politics, but who seem to be reinforcing the “okey-doke”: the same-old status quos in the Black community, just with a fresher, younger vocabulary. Some of these people called themselves “Hip Hop Feminists.” And in order to get along as a new and struggling Black Public Intellectual (BPI), I bit my tongue sometimes about glaring disconnects between what these folks said their politics were and what actual agendas they supported.

Despite my troublemaking stance, I keep quiet for my own good. I did that because in the Creative Writing community, I’m already known for having a hard time keeping my mouth shut, which is (probably) why I’m not a famous poet and paid in full.

I can get on folks’ nerves. And I can be abrasive as well. But I’ve noticed that I tend to be abrasive when someone I thought was supposed to stand for one thing all of a sudden does a complete turn. And the turn happens usually in the process of “branding” him- or herself in some way that’s supposed to further an academic career, either one already existing or one just beginning.

Kind of like I pretended to be all bold and “keeping it real” but actually, I kept quiet because I wanted to be known as a BPI. Get it?

Now, nobody ever said I was Black Girl Jesus. (I have my flaws and faults; I’m sure you’ve noticed some of them already, if you’ve been reading this blog.) But I can say, my blog doesn’t count as a real “hustle” for me and it doesn’t further my “real” career, either. First, a blog doesn’t count as publication at my university; I have to produce a book-in-print to be promoted to full professor or get a merit raise. Also, since most of the well-regarded BPIs out there hold doctorates and I don’t, I’m also excluded from that cohort as well. I hold a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and I don’t teach cultural studies or literature, etcetera , I teach kids how to write poems and short stories.

I started this blog by myself. It is completely homegrown, and it costs only a few dollars a year to maintain. As you can see, it’s not fancy in the least. And to date, I’ve never been asked to offer my “expert” opinion on some part of Black culture in the mainstream media; nobody ever asks me to speak for “Black people,” only for “Honorée.” As I’m fond of saying, this blog is for me, my mama, and people who need me to keep it real.

Anyway, a few days ago, I was in the middle of my regular, twice-weekly, online rant on Jay Z, the rapper I admittedly love to hate. I said that I looked skeptically at any feminist who supported Jay-Z’s work, and that it just wasn’t possible to lift up a misogynist and be a feminist at the same time. I don’t know why I was surprised, but I was by the irate response from several Twitter folks, not the least of whom was Dream Hampton, Jay-Z’s ghostwriter for his book, Decoded, and his actual friend. (I didn’t even know Ms. Hampton followed me on Twitter. I must say I was very flattered, even though she got me told in front of God and everybody.)

Then there were other women, several of whom identified as feminists, who used the sad and ridiculous excuse that in “99 Problems,” Jay-Z wasn’t referring to women as b-words, but rather, men.

Oh, okay. Then that makes all the rest of the b-word and h-word references in his music absolutely acceptable. I’m completely nose-deep in The Jay-Z Fabulous Koolaid now.

Here’s what precipitated my rant (other than, of course, the fact that I don’t understand how a marginally talented and very rude and mean-spirited guy like Jay-Z is now King of Hip Hop, when there are much more talented MCs out there who even seem to have some home training): Supposedly there was a poem a few days ago in which Jay-Z had agreed to stop using the b-word, because of his love for his brand-new baby girl. Then, there erupted many thousand Facebook and Twitter beefs between those people who wanted to hold Jay-Z accountable for his past behavior, and those who were saddened or, indeed, enraged by the accountability crew’s refusal to forgive.

But then, in the middle of all that uproar, Jay-Z’s “poem” was discovered to be a forgery. His representatives issued a public statement to that effect. Which basically meant that Jay-Z reserved the right to call women—and let’s admit it, Black women—the b-word. The h-word was never even part of the discussion, by the way.

As I pondered what had happened, I ran through my memories of other “feminist” BPIs who had supported Jay-Z’s music in the past, talked about his brilliance in Decoded—a book that wasn’t even technically penned by him, but by Dream Hampton, a Black woman—and who most recently, made excuses for his grave and years-long misogynistic speech-acts.

And I wondered something: how many of these Faux Black Feminists find themselves caught in the middle of issues that require them to demonstrate, like, actual feminist principles instead of, say, hustler principles? For example, if you brand yourself as a male or female “Hip Hop Feminist” and then, it occurs to you that a “Hip Hop Feminist” might be, like, an oxymoron, then what? You have to start your career all over again, and you have to reestablish your brand, too. And who wants to do that?

But guess what? If  you’re sitting up on the TV or radio, representing Black people or Black women, saying that you are an activist in the service of Black woman’s empowerment but you are not demanding Black public cultural behaviors that promote Black woman’s empowerment, that’s not cool. And that’s not honest, either. Your career is how you make money. Helping Black women is supposed to be about your heart and soul.

I know what I’m saying is provocative. And I know that this post is going to lose me many BPI connections that I have built over the past year and a half. And that thought both saddens and scares me. But you know, as my granny used to say, “It just bees like that.”

As a poet who does not have a Phd and most importantly, who’s never made a dime as a cultural critic, I have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to challenge what I believe are some very damaging BPI practices going on right now, by both Sisters and Brothers.

I have the responsibility to say, there are principles for a cultural critic who purports to help the Black woman. It’s one thing to write about the brilliance and artistry in Hip Hop music. It’s another to tether one’s feminist politics, career, and popularity to Hip Hop’s MCs (and their cults of personality), the overwhelming majority of whom damaged both Black women’s public image in the White “mainstream” as well as her self-esteem in her own Black community.

And it is very hypocritical to pretend that Hip Hop culture has been positive, when it has not only supported misogyny against Sisters, but also, created an ugly dynamic that attempts to dismiss as “classist,” “racist” or “generationally out of touch” any critics who want to hold both the MCs and the culture responsible for the normalization of misogyny within the Black community.

I’m not saying real Black Feminists don’t like to dance to Hip Hop music or don’t like the beats. We do. I’m not saying there aren’t some great non-commercial MCs. There are, indeed. But I am saying that Hip Hop culture is not about to save any Black woman. Real Black feminists don’t keep shaking our booties on the deck of the sinking ship, SS Hip Hop, just because after everyone has drowned, we hope we might find a lifeboat and then, some dollar bills floating on the top of the water.

And we don’t tether our feminist politics to a cultural institution that has degraded Black women out loud, in public, and gleefully for over fifteen years now and counting. Sure, we can invest in intellectual production on Hip Hop Music—articles, books, speaking engagements—but we can’t push a personal political agenda of Hip Hop Feminism when female empowerment is not at the top of the Hip Hop agenda, but rather apologizing for Hip Hop culture is at the top of that agenda.

To wit, “Yeah, okay, MCs talk real, real bad about Sisters, but the music is brilliant. And you know, sooner or later, Yeezy’s going to get him some therapy.”

We must take an honest look at our Black Public Intellectual brands. And if those brands are not consistent with what—and who—we say we stand for politically, then we have to change accordingly. Or, we should stop pretending. Because despite what Hip Hop has told us, the hustle is not the ultimate goal. The mental and emotional health of the Black community is.

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Today, I’m so excited because I’ve been waiting for weeks for the release of the first single from Dr. Guthrie Ramsey’s musical project, The Colored Waiting Room and it’s finally here!  Much of Black Social Media has been buzzing about this project for weeks. I know I have.

Before I get to the sassy part, let me give you the fussy, academic stuff. Please be patient, now.

Hailing from the “Up South” Mecca of South Side Chicago, Dr. Guthrie Ramsey is a former elementary and high school music teacher who earned his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Michigan. He’s the author of Race Music: Black Cultures From Be-Bop to Hip Hop (University of California Press, 2003), which was named outstanding book of the year by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Dr. Ramsey also has the distinction of being recognized as a Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth, a DuBois Institute Fellow at Harvard, and a recipient of the Lowens Award, from the Society for American Music for best article on an American music topic. Currently, he’s the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.

Now here’s the good part.

What I like about Guthrie Ramsey is that he’s a “regular brother” who just happens to also be a seriously brilliant musician with his own Philadelphia band, Dr. Guy’s Musiqology. And you’ll see his brilliance and the beauty of his music when you download (for FREE) and listen to “Stolen Moments,” the first single off his new CD, The Colored Waiting Room, sung by the inimitable Denise King.

But you now why I’m even more excited? Because “Bruh Guthrie” (as I call him) asked me to contribute a “meditation” for the first single!  Here are a few lines from what I wrote:

….now when can you come over? Maybe around midnight, later? It’s been a while. (If you like, I’ll say please.) I miss you. You miss me. Of course, I know you do. You miss how we…

Sidebar: Y’all didn’t know that side of me, did you?  Please don’t tell nobody that sometimes, though I am always ladylike, I’m not always well-behaved.

To read the rest of my “Stolen Moments” meditation inspired by the beautiful single sung by Denise King, and also to see a fabulous short film about the entire project known as The Colored Waiting Room, click here and scroll down.  (It’s a different site from the download site.)

And have a great weekend! I know whenever I listen to new music, it always makes me feel good.

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I’m so excited to introduce Reginald Dwayne Betts, who has joined PhillisRemastered as a regular guest blogger!

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and father of two sons. His memoir, A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009), won the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, and his collection of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), was awarded fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Open Society Institute, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop and Warren Wilson College. As a poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Betts writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society.

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“Black Poetry, the Night, and Notes on Forgetting”

I.

The fourth of July weekend, 1997, found me bracing myself for cuffs once again. Already in prison I was headed for a cell all my own, a little spot in C Building to celebrate my lack of freedom. The reason I was going to the hole isn’t as important now as it was then, the invented assault on an officer charge then a way to demonstrate how little control I had over my own life and now a point of humor.

The only relevant part is that I ended up in that single cell on the bottom floor, in the summer time when the heat was so oppressive that men would strip naked and lay on the small plastic covered mattress with a cup or two of water poured over them. A makeshift cold bath. Nothing of the situation had me expecting my life would change, nothing of the situation expected me to find the one thing I’d get from prison and hold on to forever, as if it were some life line.

This was my second time in the hole, and I’d already learned that with a book I could deal with my cell door never opening. Quickly I learned that despite the library cart not coming to the hole there were hundreds of books back there. Books that were read and passed on, having either been brought back there by people who had time to think before they were hauled off to solitary, or snuck back there by guards and the housemen who worked those hallways, passing out our meals, cleaning showers and sweeping the hallways under the not so careful watch of the C/Os.

One day I stood at the steel grill of my cell door, and shouted down the hallway for a book, any book, to read. Moments later Dudley Randall’s “The Black Poets” was tossed under my cell. Up until this point I’d never heard of Robert Hayden, of Lucille Clifton, of Sonia Sanchez. I’d never heard of Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight and so many others. You were expected to read the books and pass them on–so I began copying poems long hand in a little blue folder. And this is how I became a poet.

This is also why when I think about poetry, when I hear people saying that poetry saved their lives, I imagine it to be true. What I learned when I came home is writing can exist in a superficial way in the lives of those who claim to love it, that it could be reduced to arguments that did little to advance the art, little to interrogate the art, but much to lift the intellectual status of the arguer. I found myself in those same conversations, sometimes leading them.

It has all been a manner of forgetting what it was like when the stakes were so high that the frivolities of my own criticism were lost in my pursuit of the poem that didn’t need me to criticize it. Back then I knew two poets, and didn’t talk about poetry much to anyone, and it was enough. Now I know scores of poets, and talk about poetry often, and it is often not nearly the bread it was before.

II.

A few days ago, maybe a little longer, a friend of mine told me that I was a poet in the MFA generation. I had no real idea what “the MFA generation” was, but in retrospect understood some of what he was saying. We, a generation of writers who became writers under the academia sponsored tutelage of other writers, our readings directed and in some ways predicated on the institutions we went to, are susceptible to having gaps in our hearings. Which is to say gaps in the writers who we have been encouraged to take as literary mentors.

The argument is that for the black writer, this is more troubling, because if one is to accept the authority of the institutions that degree us, one must, almost, also accept that barring any reclamation projects (i.e. Zora Neale Hurston) that the writers of color who were not acknowledged as writers by this hugely generalized beast called academia are not writers of quality.

He misses the point though, because even where he is correct, it isn’t the fault of the institution that we forget writers. Writers have and always will be forgotten. Alan Dugan won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his first collection of poems and I can’t recall any poet ever mentioning him to me. I went through undergrad at a fine institution without once reading Steinbeck or Faulkner, while majoring in English. I also didn’t read many writers of color outside of classes that fell under the rubric of African American studies. But this is besides the point. My friend, fine writer that he is, has chosen (in this brief conversation) to advocate agitation over the work.

I am not a poet of the “MFA generation,” if there is any such thing. I understand that it is a clever way of framing a conversation about all that literature in America lacks, but in the end it fails to discuss what is vibrant, or even what one can do about the missing pieces, or why the missing pieces are important.

Regardless, I am a poet of prison, which is to say that if you have been to prison you might understand fully how almost every conversation for me appears a sort of circling the wagon, of returning to some point where the nights were bleak and what I saw out of my window was barbed wire. I blame those nights for making me a poet, and blame those nights for introducing to Neruda and Knight, to Brooks, Alexander, Baraka and Hemingway.

All of which is to say that I was introduced to authors by my own whim, and am a bit disappointed in what I’ve forgotten, disappointed in how some of what drove me to want to write has been dismissed by writers and writing programs I have been a part of without me acknowledging that those poems carried something that drove me. We should be disappointed in what we forget and what others fail to acknowledge, but the idea that it is not totally our duty to do the remembering (in ways that move beyond critique and complaint) strikes me as naive.

In 1997, the second collection of poems I purchased was Michael Harper’s anthology Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep. I remember reading a poet in there, Sherley Anne Williams. She first gave me the idea to write poem as epistle. Just a few days ago I was searching for her name, and couldn’t find a trace of those poems anywhere on line. I did find a Sherley Anne Williams who wrote “The Peacock Poems,” but wasn’t sure if that was her. A friend pointed me to the journal Callaloo, where her series of poems (the series I remembered) “Letters From A New England Negro” were published.

Williams’s first collection The Peacock Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award when it was published. Yet, her name too, I have not heard mentioned, have not mentioned myself. So now, as a free man, with a wealth of friends who are writers, I find it harder to discover and rediscover poetry that I should love than I did when I was in prison. And I ask myself why, and I’m convinced that the problem, if there is a problem, is that black poets have been tricked into believing that there is this homogenous thing called the “black community.”

And so we imagine that we get what we need, we must get what we need, because we are in this community. But we lack—and we bicker, and we complain. And while those these are great, and are indeed vital, we (this fictitious, homogenous whole) seem not to remember with the same ferociousness that we bemoan the forgetting. And then we fail to discover why we do this. Or to remember.

None of this is to argue I’m innocent in any of this. I think it’s to say that in prison I hoped to find a community where I could raise my children, and they would say with pride that, “Such and such used to come by my dad’s house, it would be him, him, her and her and they would be talking about poems and drinking and cursing and laughing.”

That my children would say this and be amazed each time that they thought about it how vibrant the arts community I was apart of was/is—and my biggest failure as a poet is that I have not worked to create that kind of community around myself, being far too concerned with the trappings of national recognition than the happiness of true community.

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The question would be asked, what did Dr. King make his sacrifice for? In The Untelling by Tayari Jones, one of her characters is fond of saying, “Is this why Dr. King died?”

Back then, the responsibility hung heavy on my shoulders and those of my peers, and though that burden was ponderous on King Day, it rested there throughout the year.  If we failed, we failed the same community King shed his blood for. The question of why he died—the ultimate message of his sacrifice—was  broached by African American community as a way of reminding us of great responsibility.

King did not die so we could become criminals. King did not die so a Black man could beat his wife or rape a woman. King did not die so we could drop out of high school before graduation.  And so on and so forth, etcetera. And those were the big things.

But not calling another Black man or woman out of his or her name, well, that was the absolute minimum.

Okay, so now, you’re thinking I’m the millionth Negro who’s writing an essay to say, Dr. King did not die so we could call each other n—-r or  b—h or h-. But guess what? That’s not this blog post. This blog post is about difficulty.

See, dying is a hard thing. In fact, it’s the hardest thing there is. There’s no coming back from death, and despite my Christian faith, I’m not sure there’s anything beyond death. It could be nothing, a nothing that goes on forever and ever and ever.

And if dying’s the hardest thing there is, and Dr. King did that, why are we living, breathing Black intellectuals so afraid that we won’t be liked anymore by other Black people that we won’t tell Black people the truth?

So, in celebration of Dr. King’s birthday, I’ve decided to be that rare Black intellectual who’s not afraid of risking my Black Passport by telling other Black people things they don’t want to hear. I’m going to tell the truth.

First things first.

If you are African American and you call another Black man (or woman) the n-word even if it’s not in real life but on a record, you’re not creating art.

Art is hard. Art is difficult. Calling someone a mean name is easy. You are not smart if the n-word is the first word you reach for. What you are is lacking in imagination. And you’re embarrassing me, The Race, and your mama.

Yes, using the n-word falls under your freedom of speech. And it’s also my freedom of speech to tell you that growing up in the ghetto and then making a lot of money does not mean you’re a genius. It means, your setting such a low bar makes it easier for me to make a living as an academic because anybody with a vocabulary above fifty words who went to graduate school will really look like a genius compared to you.

I guess I should thank you profusely, but again, you’re embarrassing me. And since you might not know what “profusely” means, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Want to call a Black woman a b—h or h-? Okay. Go on ahead. But again, that means you have a lack of creativity. It also means, while you might be telling the truth when you say you love your mother, wife or baby daughter, you might consider that it is truly possible to treat your family right while treating others badly so you can still be a bad person. Just ask CEOs of Fortune Five Hundred companies or read about slave masters in a history book. An actual book, not one on tape.

Here’s some more truth: I walk into a classroom and look in the faces of my White students and wonder, how many of them think it’s okay to consider my Black female skin and think I’m nothing but a receptacle for sex, if my brothers already have talked about me that way and nobody has ever made a real effort to stop it—even the people who are supposed to know better, like Black public intellectuals and Sisters who call themselves feminists.

Let me keep going with this whole truth thing.

It’s the truth that sometimes, I want to pack my belongings in a rag on a stick and take the next Underground Railroad Train out of this Black community and start A New Race.

And that’s just when I get embarrassed about the name-calling.

Don’t even get me started on the despair I feel about Black-on-Black crime, the Black men who rape or kill Black women or each other, the Black men who won’t stay and be fathers to their children, the drug dealers (sometimes who are Black women) in our community. All those things we can help, and those things we can’t really blame on White people—but there is liable to be some Black intellectual with a Phd who will find a loophole for us to act like fools, probably concerning something White folks did to us before the telephone was invented.

I know a lot of Black people are just like me. I suspect those intellectual Blacks who talk about “Post-Race” aren’t really trying to move this society forward. They’re just sick and tired of The Present Black Race they have to belong to, people embarrassing upstanding Black folks with their bad behavior, and then, in order to own A Black Passport, we upstanding African Americans have to get in line and pretend—or be called sellouts.

Some of those Post-Race folks feel the same way I do: As much as I want to help Black people, loving this community sometimes feels like I’m in love with somebody who beats me, and who will eventually be the death of me. And then, who will marry a younger version of me, only to beat her to death, too.

We’re getting to a place where those of us Black folks who are surviving and thriving are being faced with a terrible choice: should the small number of us forget “linked fate,” turn our backs on centuries of shared history to save ourselves, or should we sacrifice our lives for the community, as King did?

I’ll tell you the final truth—a truth I’ve never admitted in print: sometimes I just can’t stand the Black community. Sometimes, I shake in anger when I see how we will justify any crime, large or small. Sometimes while I love my own Black self, I hate certain kinds of Black folks. Certain kinds. The ones who embarrass me and fill me with despair, I mean.

I wonder if that’s how Dr. King felt, in the years before his death. Not all the time, maybe not even sometimes, but every once in a while. When he thought about the negative aspects of this community, was he embarrassed? Angry? Contemptuous? Or even, hateful?

After all, Dr. King wasn’t Jesus Christ. He was just a man. So maybe Dr. King did experience those feelings, but still, somehow he had enough love for all Black folk–even the tacky ones– to stay with us. Enough love to lay down his life for us. That’s really something.

And I think about his profound love, not just on his birthday, but many other days throughout the year, when I remain with my Black community, despite everything, and I try so hard to keep reaching for love myself.

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First, let me begin with a shallow and totally unrelated issue to the Oprah Television Network (OWN): Miss Lady, your hair is always hooked and fabulous and Andre is A Beauty Genius. I’ve always wanted to tell you that. Now that I have, let me move on.

Oprah, I read about your concerns for OWN today in The Huffington Post . Apparently, viewership isn’t what you had hoped for in the first year of your network. However, you have vowed to continue with OWN, which makes me really happy. As far as I know, you’re the only African American woman who ever started a television network. But I was more than a bit concerned when you mentioned that you didn’t want OWN to become “the Roots network”—meaning a Black network.

That statement of yours confused me. First, it implies that there’s something wrong with starting a network focused on African Americans. Second, it implies that African Americans don’t watch television—a lot.

But let me try to get past my hurt Black feelings to your colorblind financial realism in this matter: you want a TV network that appeals to a “mainstream” audience so you can make money. This means you have to attract White viewers, and so, the logic goes, if you attract White viewers, the rest will come. “Rest,” meaning “people of color.”

I hear you, Miss Lady. Your logic certainly worked with your germinal talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Every woman—and a lot of men—that I knew watched your show five days a week. We had to; otherwise, we’d miss what everyone was talking about the next day. And we couldn’t have that.

I started watching back in college in 1987, and I was a loyal follower for about 15 years. And then— let me be frank—I just got tired of your being rich.

Oprah, I don’t mean to “throw shade.” Your show was revolutionary. I loved it. I credit you with changing American society, and this is no flattery. For example, your show moved the dialogue about sexual abuse out of the closet. In addition, your featuring openly gay and lesbian folks on your show also started a much needed tolerance dialogue.

But in later years, I got tired of episodes featuring 1000-count sheets and lobster paella and whatnot. And even though I greatly admired your humanitarian work, I just couldn’t connect anymore. And one of the reasons is that I didn’t feel as if you were talking to everyone in your audience. Honestly, I thought that, with a few exceptions, you were only talking to White women.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those Black folks who define “blackness” within very narrow boundaries. I know there are African Americans who occupy many different categories. We all don’t fit into one box. Still, I didn’t feel very, well, noticed in the last years of your show. And so—gulp—I stopped watching.

But wait, Oprah! There’s a good ending to this!

While I stopped watching you on TV, I still had to get my Oprah fix. You’d become part of my life—entered my DNA, even. So, I started reading O Magazine. At first, I’d just pick up an issue on the newsstand. In the southwestern, conservative area I live in, there are very few magazines offered with African Americans on the cover. I’d be in the grocery or drug store and see the magazine and my heart would give a little jump. “There’s Oprah!” I’d exclaim (to myself so I didn’t look crazy.)

Then, I got hooked on O and decided to subscribe, and I’ve never regretted it. And let me tell you why.

O is a truly multicultural magazine—but it doesn’t make a big deal about “diversity” or draw attention to it. It’s not billed that way; it just is that way. I see ads featuring women of color alongside ads featuring White women—classy, not stereotypical ads. And I read articles written by women of all complexions telling me it’s okay to be strong, healthy, successful, whether I’m married, single, child-free or a mother.

And not only that, you present women of all ages, not just stick-thin model-girls who got their periods three years ago. (Not that we didn’t all have to start menstruating at some point, but I’m closer to menopause than training bras now, so I don’t want to be reminded of that unfortunate time when I didn’t know the tampon applicator didn’t go up there, too.)

O Magazine is off the chain, Oprah.

Do you see where I’m going with this? I’m saying that you need to make OWN less like your talk show in its last years and more like your magazine in its present years.

Look, Sister, I know you need to make your money. I’m not trying to mess up your hustle. I’m not asking for television charity for Negroes. I know in order for you to create a financially successful network you need to attract White viewers, in the same way you needed to do that for your talk show. I’m not saying that demographic isn’t important. But I am saying that Native American, Latina/Hispanic, Black and Asian women need and want programming, too, and many of us have cable television subscriptions.

Oprah, women of color are an extremely untapped market in television viewing. We  want woman-first programming—and we want it to be classy and sensitive. We don’t want to see ourselves stereotyped. But we don’t have that programming yet. You could give us that, in the same matter-of-fact, calm manner that you give us what we need with magazine reading–and you could have your White viewers as well.

In the same way that you transformed the talk show, I’m positive you could transform the way a cable television network is run. Oprah, you have the vision, the determination—and let’s keep it real, the deep pockets.  You got this, Miss Lady.

Love, your  imaginary friend and actual fan,
Honorée

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My latest home training lesson has to do with people who are in search of a professional favor, and how they should  act when asking for that favor. (Thus, the “hand out” in the picture.)  I’m writing this post now because this is letter of recommendation season, and a lot of folks are reaching out to older and/or more accomplished folks for letters of recommendation. For those of you who are doing that, I want to pull your coat before you make a fool of yourself. Even though the title says “Old Black School Home Training,” again, this is for all all races, complexions, backgrounds and genders.

As someone who is not famous in the least, but who nevertheless holds a tenured university appointment, I do have plenty folks who come to me for professional favors. These favors fall under what is called “service,” which is the equivalent in the academic world of community service. In other words, I don’t get paid for professional favors; all I get is a “thank you”—hopefully; we’ll get to that in a minute—an “I’m nice” feeling inside, and some credit from The Man/Woman Above.

Professional favors include things like letters of recommendation. These can be for students for graduate school or jobs, for professional peers’ tenure file, or for mentees’ fellowship applications. Also, writing a blurb for the back of someone’s book is a professional favor. All of these things—a job, a spot in graduate school, tenure, a fellowship—help to move someone’s career forward. So, I ask you, why is it lately that when someone asks me for a favor, all but a very few of these people don’t act like it’s a favor?

For example, a few years back, a young Black woman who had asked me to be her mentor and who had used me for a refernce asked me for a letter of recommendation. Correction. She wrote me and said: “I need you to send a letter of recommendation to this particular place.” No “please.” No “thank you.” No “I really appreciate your time.” Unh-uh. None of that.

So, I wrote the young woman back an email and told her that I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but even when someone was a friend and little “play-sister” to me, her approach was not an appropriate way to ask someone for a letter of recommendation. I was thinking of my younger self—the self who didn’t have a lot of sense– when I took the time to write that email and I took pains to include lots of kindness because I didn’t want to be cruel. Though I didn’t say so, I know I didn’t always act the best in the past and I wanted to give her an opportunity to get herself together.

But you what? She didn’t get herself together. This child wrote me back a four page email letting me know I was very condescending. I didn’t even bother respond—or pray for her rude self, either. I just gave her The Heisman Hand and went on about my business, which would be working on my own writing hustle.

But now, I see kids/young folks/even very grown folks who are perfectly nice but who have no idea how to approach folks for favors and I feel badly about deleting their emails—even as I’m scared to personally correct. So, I’ve included below some things to consider when asking someone for a professional favor.

#1

If you were a student of someone and you know you dogged that person out on the teaching evaluations, don’t ask for a letter of recommendation. Similarly, if you have thrown shade on somebody in a public forum and you know this might have gotten back to him or her, do not have the colossal nerve to ask him or her to recommend you for a job, fellowship or tenure.

Why would you want someone you don’t respect to recommend you for something? What kind of sense does that make? Nonsense, is what kind.

#2

If you haven’t talked to this person in a long time, you should consider putting off asking him or her for a professional favor until you can get reacquainted. If you don’t know him or her at all, don’t even think of asking for a favor. Facebook friends does not count, okay?

I have had students from eight years ago show up at my office or write me looking for a letter of recommendation, and not only don’t I not remember the student’s name, I don’t even remember his or her face. If you live close by, consider visiting the person in the office, or offering to take the person out to coffee or lunch. He or she may not take you up on the offer, but the gesture will be appreciated. Or, start up an email correspondence before you launch into what you need.

#3

If you are asking a much older person for a professional favor and you have never been on first name basis with that person, don’t assume familiarity by call him or her by first name.

Put a handle on that name, like “Professor” or “Ms,” even if this person taught you twenty years ago and you now have gray hair. Some people don’t like familiarity. Don’t be lecturing them about that, talking about times have changed. Just don’t be familiar. Don’t you need a favor?

#4

Do not begin your professional request email or phone call with “I need such and such.”

Look, even if you are close friends with someone, who wants someone to who has what my mama calls “a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much-obliged”? Ease into your favor. Ask how the person is doing. Make some polite small talk before you start talking about what you need.

#5

Let the person know that you know how valuable his or her time is and that you understand if the answer to your request is “no.”

I’m busy as all get out. I’m always working on a book. I start working on the next book while I’m finishing the present book, because I don’t like Postpartum Book Depression. So when someone asks me for a favor, I have to set my work aside for a few days to get that favor done. And let me tell you, no writer ever wants to do that, but I will for a polite, kind person.

#6

Even if you have known someone for a while or this person has written you a letter of recommendation before, do not assume recommendation is a gift that will keep on giving. Approach each favor with a lack of presumption.

I despise presumptuousness in folks. I remember all that correction from my mother, from my granny, from Black teachers, from ladies in church, from my mentors, and even Black female strangers I would encounter at the Walgreens. I didn’t put up with all that correction and do all this work on myself for some little poo-butt who barely knows how to pee straight coming at me assuming that my professional time is his time. Frankly, I appreciate reticence when someone asks me for a favor because I’ve always been reticent when I asked someone for my own favor.

#7

Even if you believe you are the professional equal of someone, remember that your asking someone for a favor puts you below that person professionally—if only for a moment. Act accordingly. That means act with some danged humility.

For about two years now, I’ve been having Black poets I know roll on me for favors like blurbs, manuscript reading, and letters of recommendation, yet they always roll on me with a “hey what’s up” attitude, like we are equals. I had a stranger ask me for a blurb and say, “You should be familiar with my work from such and such journal.” Uh, no, I’m not. Not only hadn’t I heard of her, I hadn’t heard of that journal, either.

Unless you have accomplished what I’ve accomplished, you are not my equal, and I don’t care how much “dap” and how many free t-shirts you get at the Associated Writing Programs bookfair. And further, if you were on my level in the first place, you wouldn’t need a letter of recommendation from me; I’d need one from you. So act like you know.

#8

Do not try to micro-manage your recommender’s letter of recommendation. Meaning, do not tell your potential recommender what he or she needs to include in the letter. This is very rude and might get you The Heisman Hand.

When someone gets the recommendation form or logs into the online recommendation site, it will tell the recommender what needs to be included. Plus, most of us have done this at least fifty times. We don’t need your input, unless there is no form and no site. And even then, just say, “Professor Doe, it is suggested that you address such and such in your letter, although that is completely up to you,” and we’ll get the hint, okay?

#9

Finally, follow up with gratitude after the professional favor has been received.

A “thank you” email is the very least you owe someone who has done you a professional favor. But what is more appropriate is a thank you card. It’s unethical for someone to suggest that you give gifts in exchange for his or her doing you a professional favor, and so, that will never come up. But if you choose to send a “thank-you” gift all on your own, no one is going to turn down your gift, either.

And if you receive that job, admission into graduate school, fellowship, or tenure, you need to let that person know that you are aware that the letter of recommendation helped you reach that goal. Remember, consistent gratitude is key to asking and receiving professional favors—because you never know when you might need another one.

There were plenty of readers who, while fascinated with Wheatley’s racial (and presumably to them, exotic) background, still spoke and thought highly of her. On October 26, 1775, Wheatley sent a poem and letter to George Washington, then leader of the colonial Revolutionary forces. Washington responded to her on February 28, 1776, and he referred to her as “Miss Phillis” in his heading. These two written acts were revolutionary their own right; given the social status of Black folks in the colonies at that time, it was bold of Wheatley to write Washington, and it was a transformative act on the part of Washington to consider—and record—a Black woman as a lady.

Yet when Thomas Jefferson, a key intellectual architect of the Revolution, chose to write about Phillis Wheatley’s poetry in Notes on the State of Virginia, he dismissed her: “Religion, indeed, has produced a Phyllis Whately [sic]; but it could not produce a poet.” It is interesting that Jefferson’s contemptuous assessment of Wheatley’s poetry occurs in the same section in which he implies that Black women engage in bestiality:

Are not the fine mixtures of red and white.. preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the oranootan for the black women over those of his own species.

During Wheatley’s time, her work was not just proof of Africans’ intellectual capability, but their full humanity when placed alongside that of their White counterparts. By placing Africans in the monkey’s embrace, Jefferson attempts to take away the gains that Wheatley’s poetry accorded an entire race of people. This may seem to be an unrealistic claim—until we take Kant’s assessment of Africans into account.

Since Jefferson’s dismissal of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, there have been too many attacks to count over the years on Black poetry, but two more stand out, because the attacks focus not just on critical analysis of African American poetry, but also, on “canonical” Black poets, in particular those who are revered in the Black community.

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In 1963, the poet Louis Simpson wrote a review of Gwendolyn Brooks Selected Poems in New York Herald Tribune Book Week.  Thirteen years before, Brooks had won the Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen; she was the first African American to do so, and instantly, Brooks became one of the “Great Black Firsts,” one of the numbers recorded by the African American community in its battle against the continual onslaught of racism. As a “First,” Brooks came to represent Black achievement—and, like Wheatley, an example of Black humanity. It would seem that Simpson was aware of Brooks’ importance to Black cultural production and the connection of that cultural production to Black America in general , for he begins his review with a dismissive assessment of the entire Black Poetic Body:

Gwendolyn Brooks’s Selected Poems contains some lively pictures of Negro life. I am not sure it is possible for a Negro to write well without making us aware he is a Negro; on the other hand, if being a Negro is the only subject, the writing is not important.

He then goes on to say, “Miss Brooks must have had a devil of a time trying to write poetry in the United States, where there has been practically no Negro poetry worth talking about.” And in those few short sentences, Simpson attempts to make quick work of a tradition of Black poetry that (in 1963) went back over two centuries.

Simpson went on to publish several books of criticism, and apparently, his attempt to dismember of African American poetry did not affect his career in the least. When Simpson’s review was reprinted in On Gwendolyn Brooks: Reliant Contemplation (2001), it included a statement by Simpson:

I am glad to see my review of Gwendolyn Brooks’s Selected Poems reprinted because this gives me an opportunity to set the record straight…I had said in my review that black writing that concentrated on being black was of limited interest. I did not mean to suggest that black writers should not speak of their blackness—only that they could write about other things as well.

Here, Simpson acknowledges that he might have hurt some folks’ feelings—presumably Black folks’ feelings—but will not acknowledge that, in the same way that he assumes that the inferiority of Black poetry speech acts should be taken prima facie, his contemptuous speech act detailing what he views as the inferiority of Brooks’s poetry and the entirety of African American poetry should be taken in the same way.

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A few days ago, Helen Vendler published a review in The New York Review of Books  on Rita Dove’s anthology, The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry. After Brooks, Dove was only the second African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry (in 1987, thirty-seven years after Brooks), and thus, holds honored status in Black literary circles.

We are now in the twenty-first century, and so, in the past, a review might have taken months to make the rounds among poetry circles; now, it takes a matter of days. There have been poets on internet social media (such as Facebook) discussing Vendler’s revew and Rita Dove’s subsequent letter in defense of it.  Many, if not most, of the White poets that have discussed Vendler’s review have been outraged, but they have missed the context in which most Black poets take Vendler’s review—as part of a ceturies-long, ongoing attack on the Black Poetic Body.

All critics view themselves as experts. In order to argue something, the arguer must view him- or herself as an expert on the subject. But there’s a difference between arguing about a subject and arguing based upon one’s place in the world. Helen Vendler’s arguments against Dove’s editorial choices are based upon what could be called White Privilege Literary Largesse. She doesn’t mind that Rita Dove includes a few poets of color —what she calls “minority” poets– in the anthology; what Vendler minds is that Dove has the audacity to place those poets on the same level as the White poets.

Vendler hasn’t always had a problem with Rita Dove. In times past, she has been a champion of Dove’s work, as when she included positive assessments of Rita Dove’s poetry alongside Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Jorie Graham in The Given and The Made: Strategies of Poetic Refinition (1995). However, once Dove started making her own canonical gestures by editing her own anthology Vendler moveed from being Dove’s champion to her attempted vanquisher.

First, there’s an attack on Dove’s choices, as when states, “Multicultural inclusiveness prevails,” and then Vendler proceeds to tally up pages given White—all male—poets versus Black poets. This already shows that Vendler isn’t engaged in the usual pedestrian criticism of the table of contents, and it becomes even clearer when Vendler moves from page counts to an attack on Rita Dove’s person, as evidenced by the following:

How is it that Dove, a Presidential Scholar in high school, a summa graduate from college, holder of a Fulbright, and herself long rewarded by recognition of all sorts, can write of American society in such rudimentary terms?

This passage is telling because it shines a light on the issues Vendler has with Dove-the-Black-Woman and not just Dove-the-Editor. Vendler wants to know how Dove could be so ungrateful, because she was “rewarded” so much. “Awarded” would imply that Dove deserved her many accolades, simply because she’s a brilliant poet and hard worker. However, “rewarded” implies that Dove was given advantages in exchange for something. And what exactly does Vendler think that something should be? Ignoring the fraught history of this country? Pretending that Black poets besides “Carl Phillips and Yusef Komunyakaa”—the two Black poets who don’t need “special defense”—don’t exist?

But what remains unspoken speaks volumes: Vendler really means, how is it that an Uppity Black Female Poet dared to get out of her place? How dare she make her own editorial—intellectual—choices without checking with anyone first? And that anyone would be Helen Vendler.

And finally, there is this passage, the ultimate attack on the Black Poetry Body:

Dove feels obliged to defend the black poets with hyperbole. It is legitimate to recognize the pioneering role of Gwendolyn Brooks, just as it is moving to observe her self-questioning as she reacted to the new aggressiveness in black poetry. But doesn’t it weaken Dove’s case when she says that in her first book Brooks “confirmed that black women can express themselves in poems as richly innovative as the best male poets of any race”? As richly innovative as Shakespeare? Dante? Wordsworth? A just estimate is always more convincing than an exaggerated one.

In other words, the best Black poets can’t ever tangle with the best White ones. And it’s ridiculous for anyone to assert that–especially another Black poet.

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There’s been a lot talk this year among poets about “race” in poetry—“race” meaning “black people” or “people of color.” I’ve talked about this issue on my blog, that “race” is a concept, going back to the eighteenth century. Thus, when I write about black people, I’m not writing about race. I’m writing about full participants in humanity—and I’m writing about this humanity as a given, which is something Phillis Wheatley couldn’t take for granted.

And the obvious question is why does no one say that White folks are writing about “race” when they write about themselves? (No one except Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark, of course.) No, when White folks write about themselves, they are writing about America. They are writing about unraced universal experience. They are writing about the ultimate human existence.

This condescending critical assessment of Black poetry has been in place since Jefferson first took up his pen, and informs the sort of contemporary scholarly/intellectual condescension of Simpson and Vendler, because when one attacks African American cultural production, that attack goes to the heart of an issue that is both moral and intellectual, and which goes back to Enlightenment philosophy. Now, it’s not that Black folks aren’t human; only the meanest White person would say something like that. But what’s implied is that cultural production assumes humanity from the start. It also assumes something else: privilege.

In Rita Dove’s introduction to her anthology, she assumes her own kind of privilege, intellectual privilege, and her right to claim that privilege galls Helen Vendler, for if Blacks and other poets of color are not included in Dove’s anthology because of multiculturalism, but rather, on their literary merit alone, then the whole American literary landscape not only changes in the present, it also reconfigures the past. And Helen Vendler and others like her are terrified of that prospect.

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* The title of this essay is a line taken from Phillis Wheatley’s poem, “On Being Brought From Africa to America” in Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London: A. Bell, 1773.

Works Cited

Brooks, Gwendolyn.  Annie Allen. New York, Harper and Row, 1949.

—. Selected Poems. New York, Harper and Row, 1963.

Dove, Rita. “Defending an Anthology: Rita Dove in Reply to Helen Vendler.” New York Review of Books 22 December 2011.

—. The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry. New York, Penguin, 2011.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Query XIV: Laws.” Notes on the State of Virginia.

Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Trans. John

T. Goldthwait. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1993.

Simpson, Louis. “Taking the Poem by the Horns.” New York Herald Tribune Book Week, 27 October 1963, 27.  Rpt in Gwendolyn Brooks: Reliant Contemplation (Under Discussion) Edited by Stephen Caldwell Wright.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Vendler, Helen.  “Are These the Poems to Remember?”  New York Review of Books 24 November 2011.

—.  The Given and The Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Washington, George. Letter to Phillis Wheatley on February 28, 1776. Writings Vol. 4 Edited by John Kilpatrick. (1931).

Wheatley, Phillis. Letter to George Washington on October 26, 1775. Phillis Wheatley: The Complete Writings.  Edited by Vincent Carretta. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.

A few weeks back, I taped an episode of Left of Black. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this show, this is the weekly webcast hosted by the fabulous and splendid Dr. Mark Anthony Neal (aka Dr. MAN) of Duke University and produced by the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke.

Guess what? Today, my episode of Left of Black is airing on Duke University’s UStream at 1:30PM EST!  I’m so excited!

I’ll be talking about my Phillis Wheatley poetry project, The Age of Phillis—that’s when I make nice—and then, I’ll be talking about some more controversial subjects, like Slutwalk and Touré’s controversial article on Michael Vick, which I sliced and diced a while back on this blog. Y’all know me. I like to cause plenty trouble. (And you know you like it.)

You can catch the episode STREAMING TODAY at 1:30pm EST on the Duke University Ustream. Here’s the link. 

In addition to me, Dr. MAN will be joined by E. Patrick Johnson, author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a minute, so this is my opportunity to get a bit of a preview. I know I won’t be disappointed, because I’ve heard wonderful things about this timely, important book. And I’m a southerner, so I’m definitely interested in reading Sweet Tea.

So, join Dr. MAN, E. Patrick Johnson, and me TODAY at 1:30pm EST on Left of Black!

If you miss the streaming episode, you can always see the recorded episode. Go to either Mark Anthony Neal’s Twitter page (click here)   OR you can go to Left of Black’s Twitter Page (click here).

And if you aren’t following me (Honorée Fanonne Jeffers) on Twitter, you know you want to! Here I am.

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First uploaded on realdeepblues.blogspot.com

For the past few months, I’ve been threatening (to my friends) to start a new feature about manners on my blog.   Sure, there’s Miss Manners and all her books, but let’s face it. Miss Manners ain’t Black.  Yes, I said it. It had to be said.

Listen, there are different ways of moving through the manners minefield in the Black community. Traditional Negroes have an extremely involved set of home training going way back to 1619. And there is a whole bunch of us Black people who remember.

For example, back in the 1970s when I was a little girl, bad manners could get your butt whipped—or in the country, switched—all up and down two or three blocks of your neighborhood by everybody’s mama–everybody’s Black mama, that is. And then, when you got home, the news would have gotten there first, and your own mama would not only whip or switch you again, she would call up the other folks who whipped or switched you and thank them for correcting you.

And why did all this happen? Because all those Black mothers–your own and someone else’s– were trying to keep your narrow, rude behind off the chain gang, which is where badly behaved Black kids—especially Black male kids—go when they get grown.

But these days, I’ve noticed that in the African American community, there’s a real rise in Negroes acting like they don’t have no [insert expletive adverb] home training.

Now, there are just admittedly some African American fools out there who weren’t raised right. And some of them Negroes, we just have to let go. Some people’s parents were raised by wolves or something, and then, they mated with other people who were raised by wolves, and then they made them some human wolf-babies. So, all those wolf-people need prayer and that’s all we can do for them because they cannot be helped.

Again, I said it. It had to be said.

But there are some Black folks with good parents who were raised right, but then those raised-right folks left home, got in with the wrong crowd of human wolf-people, forgot what their mamas taught them and started making up–or unmaking– home training rules as they went along, like this world is some Tyler Perry version of Lord of the Flies.

And here’s the deal: I don’t pay no attention to those human wolf-people.  But unfortunately, I’m starting to also bump into these Lord of the Flies folks all over the place, folks who can fake manners long enough to sneak through the cracks of polite society but still haven’t figured out, they can’t act in certain ways and get away with it forever. Sometimes, they even roll on me 1) trying to be my good friends, 2) trying to be my boyfriends (who will one day have sex with me if they are extremely, extremely lucky and go to the mall and buy something nice for me), or 3) trying to get me to help them get jobs—putting my (hopefully) good name on the line for them by writing letters of recommendation.

This lack of Old School Black Home Training among Negroes who should know better is a tap-dance on-my-nerves contest. And then, I am placed in the very uncomfortable position of either giving these people The Heisman Hand—meaning, totally ignoring them—or lecturing them on their bad behavior.

But here’s the problem with The Heisman Hand. As I get older, I feel a deeper sense of responsibility to my Black community. I think about all those old people—including my mama—who took time with me to have those conversations and pull my coat to correct me, even when I was a young knucklehead with none of the sense I had been born with.

But then, when I move into The Lecture—trying to be a Race Woman–all I get is either a promise to do better–a promise which is quickly broken–or backtalk from people trying to tell me they haven’t done anything wrong in the first place. Both of those reactions make me mad and want to cuss folks out. But because I do have me some manners, I can’t cuss folks out. (No more.) So now, instead of cussing folks out, I am faced with the possibility of personal conflict—meaning, engaging in calm discussion with my transgressor. And that is going to involve a back and forth. Which I hate. I cannot stand some back and forth.

Y’all, despite the bold way I roll in public, I really don’t like to have personal conflict/calm discussion, because I’m afraid of going back to the Angry Black Woman Who Will Cuss You Out—an ABWWWCYO—who I was long, long ago in my twenties.  I really, really enjoyed being that person, I can’t lie. My Id and I were on first name basis. But then, I had to get me a job and work on my credit. Since most good jobs in America involve working around White folks, I had to learn to behave. Because White folks cannot stand an ABWWWCYO.

And for the third time, Yes, I said it. It had to be said. Stop being surprised when I say what we all know to be true but are just too embarrassed to admit in print. I’m not embarrassed in the least, which is why you read this blog.

So now that I have evolved into a bit of graciousness and maturity, I avoid personal conflict/calm discussion like the plague. Now, on my job, I can’t always run away, so I have learned a series of polite, labyrinthine strategies for conflict resolution. But in my personal life, whenever I imagine the back and forth that will ensue, I just seize all up–unless it’s my mama. You can’t seize up with your mama.

What does “seizing up” mean? That means, I delete all the contact information of that person and pretend he or she doesn’t exist anymore.  When the phone rings and I recognize the number, I just switch off the ringer and also, switch off that place in my mind that liked or loved that particular person. Emails are easy. I can avoid emails indefinitely. (Unless, of course, they involve my job or my writing hustle.)

But if I bump into the person I “seized up” with somewhere, and that person wants to have a personal conflict/calm discussion, I’m not having it. Because I’m thinking, why did you act like that in the first place if you really wanted to be 1) a good friend, 2) a boyfriend (who would eventually have sex with me if you were extremely, extremely lucky and went to the mall and bought something nice for me) or 3) somebody I wrote letters of recommendation for?

So I just move into Southern Belle Pretend-Warmth and Charm, smile brightly, and say, “You know what?”—my voice getting breathy and sweet—“I’ve got an appointment right now. But it’s so good to see you. And let’s talk about this later. Just give me a call. Or email me.”

And you know the rest.

For those of y’all who have been getting to know me through this blog, you know that I’m all about growth. And frankly, I do realize that it’s just not emotionally healthy to run away from personal conflict/calm discussion.  I really, really know that. And I’m working on it. I started thinking about all the Lord of the Flies people I have encountered in the past who needed The Lecture but who I was just too cowardly to confront head on and instead, gave The Heisman Hand to. I know that was kind of, like, passive aggressive. So then I thought, maybe I should just write a series of Old Black Home Training lessons for this blog, and that way, I can feel a little more powerful in the future and not so cowardly.

But also, there’s an added bonus to this new feature on manners, because although I am working on dealing head on with conflict, you know what I haven’t started working on quite yet?

Signifying.

Y’all, I’m just not in that completely healthy emotional place yet, and if I can’t avoid personal conflict/calm discussion, I can still signify on a [insert expletive maternal noun] like nobody’s business on my own blog. And if he or she happens to be reading this blog and recognizes him- or herself in a particular post, that’s definitely not my intention in the least and a complete and total coincidence.

I promise. And let’s talk about this later. Send me an email. Or call me.

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