I'll start out by saying that intermittently I don't watch television for long stretches of time, like a year or two. Then I'll be stuck somewhere or on a long summer vacation or visiting family and stuck in a guest room somewhere....and I'll screen the televised landscape. I abstain from TV basically because it warps reality and that warping changes the morality and perspectives of the watchers. Some television is conscious to try and not have that warping effect but it's a very narrow bandwidth, particularly as there are now hundreds of channels available. To that point, so much availability means that people with the resources and access to be on television will be and that invariably means within a Western context---more White people.
The secret people of color don't tell White people is that we have two thoughts about you. Like when we're standing and you're talking and as a White person you say something---something so far from left field that we have to decide the value/power distribution in our relationship to figure out whether to correct you or just save this for when we talk to another person of color to tell them---"Do you know what one of them said?" People of color practice a form of racial duplicity in that we don't always say or explain or tolerate some racialized things internally but blank face, nod politely, "ignore" or deflect some of what is said. Of course it's not working and really in no way progresses racial progress and understanding but we've had to do it for hundreds of years to insure survival so we'll be doing it for a few more until the numbers balance out a bit better and we can afford to be publicly oppositional whether we're a janitor or a CEO.
However White people (throw up your arms in exasperation---because this is generally how we emotionally feel about them---kind of like seeing your dumb cousin coming up the road with another one of his insane projects made from rats and peanut butter) act out racism in new and inventive ways. Doing so messes up the social groundwork of getting past this mental illness or neurosis based on skin color. This new White fueled racism is when a White person does something racist or says something or tweets something or mentions something that happened 15 years ago when they used the word nigger.........and before people of color can get to the site of the racial outbreak to work it out---OTHER White people jump in, identify it and administer repercussions.
Let's start with Paula Deen. I like the Food Network because I like to cook and eat. I've seen her show a few times and found her to be funny, a great cook; and after seeing a few interviews with her about having overcome her fear of leaving the house after years of being a shut in by accepting the death of everyone she knew including herself---I thought she had some depth; she was a TV show I could watch whenever the odd time struck. Then she got deposed in a civil suit and they asked her some questions and it all came out---using the word nigger, Gone With the Wind dinner parties with Black men dressed up as the help and how it looked so nice to her, and the fact that she admitted that there had been a time in her life when she'd been less racially tolerant and enlightened.
Somewhere in all of this there were TV interviews, accusations, her Food Network show got cancelled and basically there was this push to run her granny ass out of town on a rail. When I peeked around the edges of it, I realized that lots of natural truths were being ignored and I think her public breakdowns had to do not only with entitlement and privilege assailed but also that she honestly was being honest...and thought that honesty was what was being asked of her. That honesty is part of her social psyche so she thought she was being "good". And if I step out on a racial branch I can see how Gone With the Wind could not only be a favorite film of hers, a modality and lifestyle she'd childhood/fantasy want and with monied friends similar to her, access and recreate. Actually when I heard the bits and pieces and then the clarifications and the further explosion of ire, I thought to myself---honestly---because I like the fun words "What the fuck else do you expect a non-college educated, non-diversity educated, non-married to a Black man, White Southern woman her age to fantasize about as a childhood fairy tale? Have you seen the fantasy episodes of Designing Women?"
White people fantasies that are time period specific are going to include the dilemma of Black people in America---there's no where for us to time travel to before 1970 that doesn't include overt racism, the word nigger, servitude and an existence legislated largely by the whims of White people. Which is why there are no time travel movies with Black folk....and the ones that we are in (Star Trek, etc.) we're real careful about prior to 1970. It's easy to cover up Spock's ears---Uhura was never taken on those away teams----say to 1940's Germany---thought logically her communication skills and social fluency would've helped.
That Imus guy said something about some nappy headed hoes playing basketball and he got busted in the chops and now most recently some Duck Dynasty hillbilly/ZZ Top looking daddy said Black people were happy pre-Civil War. Taken out of context or with context control, I suppose there were some bright spots of happiness for Black people prior to the Civil War---not at everything and every condition but we made love, basked in sunlight, took a swim, read a book (illegally, sure), had a nice meal, enjoyed farming---there were other human experiences for us beyond just being lashed as slaves and singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot until we uniformly stopped at the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
But my ire at the ire over him and all the foolish fallout---is we forget that until recently we could identify boneheads and assholes and dummies and stupid comments without having to light torches and suspend folk. Ok, so far we've got an old White woman from the South saying some old White stuff from the South and a hillbilly with a slightly skewed perception of racial history and the overall enjoyment of various people throughout time. I know---the end of the world as we know it.
Then some chick tweeted about going to Africa and not worrying about getting AIDS then added her lack of worry was over the fact that she wasn't Black, ergo less chance of infection. She worked in Public Relations and of course got fired so fast that one has to wonder if she was essentially pissed at her job and tweeted this to quit.....and get infamous/famous at the same time.
Yet statistically on the surface her statements are insensitive but in another context, true. The CDC hasn't launched that worldwide initiative to stop bottle blonde White women from spreading HIV in America nor Africa. They're the smallest demographic of HIV infected, right after intravenous drug users...another irony.
I keep seeing these continuous racial guffaws, context driven statements, faux pas, hot messes, foot in mouth-ness and I thought okay, this is a great chance for us to say---"ok, s/he said this and in talking to them what they meant or how they meant it was and the way to clarify, understand and rectify that thought and it's proliferation..."
But what's started to happen instead is before we can get a Racial Black (or in a pinch Latino/Asian/Native American) Specialist in there to raise our hands, shake our heads and try to both contextualize this and minister to the folk as an individual and the masses as a whole---White folk jump in and crucify the sonsofbitches.
I mean rabidly.
They cancel shows, pull sponsorship, fire people from decade long employment, run them out of town, burn them in effigy and throw THEIR hands up in abject frustration and disgust. Think of it like you're Store Security and you catch someone stealing something and you slap the shit out of them. Then they leave. And you go on about your day. While it might frighten the other customers, the Thief hasn't stopped being a Thief---they just got slapped. What their human inclination to do is is NOT get caught again so their thievery goes underground.
White folk are creating a new Racial Underground Railroad.
This draws me to a For Colored Girls.......... by Ntozake Shange choreo-moment.......Somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff & I waz standin there lookin at myself. The whole time & it wazn't a spirit took my stuff. Waz a man whose ego walked round like Rodan's shadow. Waz a man faster in my innocence. Was a lover I made too much room for almost run off wit alla my stuff & didn't know I'd give it up so quik. And the one running wit it don't know he got it. My stuff is the anonymous ripped off treasure of the year. Did you know somebody almost got away with me? Me in a plastic bag under their arm, me danglin on a string of personal carelessness. I'm spattered wit mud & city rain & no I didn't get a chance to take a douche.
I get that White people are trying to in justice (and guilt) clean up White folk messiness....and I'm kinda appreciative. But it's like they clean up the mess before we get a chance to learn from the mess or teach from the mess. Instead of learning not to do it again or what was wrong in the first fundamental place, White people sweep it up so fast, castigate the offender that White and yes, even people of color, don't' learn exactly what the messiness was, where it came from, how it metastasized.
The argument is that "they should know better."
And you know what---they don't.
Just like your FICO score is a mess, your momma got knocked up out of wedlock, your father got too drunk, you crashed the car, your ex did the same exact thing to you that they explained they'd done to their ex and your grandfather had an affair, you caught a sexually transmitted disease---just because we should know better, doesn't mean we do.
Learning doesn't happen by osmosis.
And sadly in defense of White people they profit from a hegemonic system based on White supremacy and entitlement but they didn't personally construct it as the individual that they are now. (They drive the car that they didn't build.)
I'm not saying White people are dumb or stupid or ignorant or so lost in their entitlement that it would be an improvement to quantify them as routinely, lovingly and often, having their heads firmly up their asses when it comes to social dealings...but I am saying that...you know...it takes effort and learning for them not to default to the above.
To further my metaphor, in many ways individually, they are children driving cars that their forefathers constructed, not realizing how big, unwieldy and dangerous it is.
But the bigger problem is this White Race Mafia that thinks they're fixing the problem folk by shutting them down before we can have a discussion on just what the fuck happened. Why? Because then White folk with racist thoughts go underground, they go into a duplicitous mentality towards people of color. We don't allow them to talk about their confusions, their mis-contextualized thoughts, their questions---remember they profited and managed racism but as anyone who's ever worked anywhere with a manager knows---your manager has a plan, an idea about how things should go but there's a whole different reality when it comes to the reality on the "floor". They manage something that they aren't completely, generations past the architecture of, aware of the intricacy of the design.
White folk need Special Education.
The kind of psycho-social Special Education re-training in the 21st century that only aware and engaged people of color can help administer. When they co-opt racial justice and edification, stealing our stuff essentially, we're in for more madness. Because race then becomes the guilt assuaging bunny rabbit for White folk to root out in each other but never their own selves.
Because here's what didn't happen in all the above incidences....other White people didn't admit that they too had said, done or thought those things.
The biggest question for me in the whole Paula Deen drama was WHOSE party was she talking about having been at and WHO was sitting at that table? Probably, predominantly a bunch of White folk who didn't get crucified like she did...and if we want to shift how they appreciate or desire those kinds of parties, we need them to understand the problematic concept of it. But we never got to THEM because we were watching Paula Deen roast. And honestly, when I think of the racial problem makers, it's not chubby White girls with visions of being Scarlett O'Hara with their own Butterfly McQueen's in attendance----it's the audiences that universally call that one of the best films of all time (coincidentally I've never seen it)----the silent majority in the audience. That's who's warped perceptions we have to worry over. The audience that accepts that overt racism on one hand and celebrates it as terrific entertainment and then destroys White people who act out racial stuff. White people are consuming themselves and I would argue people of color are being drag into a false sense of racial progress.
And as history has taught us just because there are a few blood soaked bodies on crosses in the town square doesn't mean crucifixion is a good thing.
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
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Race, Sex, and BDSM: On “Plantation Retreats” Where Black People Go to Serve Their White “Masters” | Daily Kos
Posted on February 15, 2013 by InnerStanding Isness
Those who have loved and dated across the color line have to negotiate the realities of race in our society, and by extension, its impact on their relationships. For many, this is done through explicit conversations. For others, these dialogues come implicitly, through gestures, and taken for granted shared assumptions.But how many folks actually talk about how race impacts their own sexuality, attraction, physicality, or notions of the erotic?
We live in a society that is structured around many different hierarchies of power, authority, and difference. As Foucault brilliantly observed, Power is not sitting out there in the ether, an abstraction that we just talk about in philosophy classes. Power acts through and upon bodies. Certain people are racialized in American society for example. Their bodies are locations of power–and yes resistance. Likewise, certain types of bodies are marked as “normal,” while others are deemed “different” or “abnormal.”
The “popular” imagination holds many assumptions about particular types of bodies. The black male body is something to be policed, controlled, and feared. It is both envied and despised. The Asian female body is “erotic” and “submissive.” The black female body alternates between being fecund, always available, and out of control, while simultaneously being marked as “masculine,” asexual, and unattractive. Latinas are “hot” and “sexy.” White bodies of a certain type are taken as the baseline for what is considered “beautiful” or “normal.”
Ironically, the bodies of black and brown people which are considered beautiful or attractive by the white gaze are judged as such either by how “different” they are from white norms (the exotic or savage) or how close these racialized bodies–almost like impostors or stand-ins–are to the normalized white body.
The very language we use to discuss race, the physical, and the sexual, is a quotidian example of Power in action. But, how are matters complicated when a significant part of a given person’s sexuality, and sense of the erotic, is centered on playing with the dynamics of dominance and submission?
Consider the following passage from the Colorlines article“Playing with Race”:
Contrary to popular notions, BDSM is not about abuse. It’s consensual and trusting and people refer to it as “play” (as in “I want to play with you”). The point of BDSM is notsexual intercourse. In fact, when Williams recalls her first experience as a masochist seven years ago, she says she met her partner, a white man, at a bar and “fell in love at first sight.” They made their way back to his hotel. “For the first time I felt someone could see who I really was.” And that was someone who found it erotic to be a submissive to her partner.In recent years, Williams has added another element to her repertoire as a masochist. She’s begun to engage in what is called “race play” or “racial play”—that is getting aroused by intentionally using racial epithets like the word “nigger” or racist scenarios like a slave auction.
Race play is being enjoyed in the privacy of bedrooms and publicly at BDSM parties, and it’s far from just black and white. It also includes “playing out” Nazi interrogations of Jews orLatino-on-black racism, and the players can be of any racial background and paired up in a number of ways (including a black man calling his black girlfriend a “nigger bitch”).
White master seeking black slave, however, seems the more popular of the combinations.
I could not engage is such types of role-playing. My personal politics would not allow it; my libido would not respond.That is my choice. I do not deny others their pleasure.
However, as someone interested in the relationship between race, politics, and racial ideologies, I am fascinated by how individuals negotiate white supremacy and Power.
Are people like Williams or Mollena more “evolved” and “progressive” than those of us who cannot decouple the realities and burdens of race from their bodies and psyches in the present? Alternatively, could this deep sense of both owning and living in a racialized body, be turned into a location for pleasure and catharsis:
Vi Johnson, the black matriarch of BDSM, has presented on race play at kinky conferences and she believes the appeal is different for each person. “When you’re being sexually stimulated, you’re not thinking that what’s stimulating you is a racist image, ” she says. “You’re just getting turned on.”So, for some, she says, race play is about playing with authority and for others, it might be humiliation.
Well-known sexuality and SM educator Midori, who is Japanese and German, often presents her theory that humiliation in BDSM is linked to self-esteem. Take the woman who likes it when her boyfriend calls her a “slut,” Midori says. Perhaps the woman internalized the idea that “good girls don’t,” but she enjoys her sexuality. Because the boyfriend sees her in all her complexity, Midori says, when he calls her a slut, “he is freeing her of the social expectations of having to be modest.”
That’s different than having some stranger (and jerk) calling you a slut. The stranger doesn’t see the full woman. It’s similar with race play, Midori says. By focusing, for example, on a black man’s body, while he’s bound as a slave, she’s bolstering his own perception of himself as strong and powerful…
Her workshop demonstrations have included full auction scenes mimicking those of the Old South. In them, she is the plantation mistress inspecting a black man for “purchase.” He’s in shackles and “I slap him on his face and push him down on the ground, make him lick my shoes,” she says, emphasizing that she only does the demonstration after the “psychological” talk.
In the interest of transparency, I am a sex positive person (at least according to the survey on yourmorals.org). In many ways, I am also a bit of a libertine and a hedonist who is comfortable in both exclusive and open relationships. I also have certain predilections and tastes that more “vanilla” folks could find “kinky” or “different.” Ultimately, I am just myself, and do not know how to pretend to be anyone else.I am also full of contradictions and complications as sexuality and the erotic are not neatly bounded constructs (for example, I do not like watching interracial porn where white men have aggressive sex with black women as chattel slavery looms too large in my mind; however, I have no problems watching black men have aggressive sex with white women). I have also dated many women from a range of racial backgrounds: I love women; I love variety.
I share those details not to titillate; rather, because while I am rendering a judgement of sorts, I would not want to sound “judgmental.” The difference is a subtle, but nonetheless, an important one.
One of the questions I will be asking Viola Johnson from theCarter Johnson Leather Library when I interview her in the next few weeks (fingers crossed) is how do we separate more “healthy” types of race play from those encounters that are rooted in disdain for the Other and white supremacy. Are these just inter-personal contracts or do these types of sexual relationships gain power (and are made erotic) precisely because of how they signal to larger societal taboos?
If the website Fetlife is any indication, there is apparently a not insubstantial number of people who engage in sexual roleplaying and BDSM using the motif of chattel slavery in the antebellum South. A cursory review of the member profiles suggests that many of these people are white supremacists. This is apparently not a deterrent to the black men and women who want to “serve” these white masters.
Here a white “slave owning” master offers some insight on race play and “plantation retreats”:
My major kink-interest is in chattel slave-ownership in today’s world but following the historical models of 8,000 years of historical slave-ownership tradition (from Greek-Roman through modern day)…along with everything that might relate to it (which sometimes can go pretty far into the realm of BDSM activities, depending on the partner). I’m very knowlegable in the field of historical slavery.Some of my other non-kink interests include history and philosophy, classic cars, music, science, singing and writing lyrics, architecture, comparative culture, language, reading and counseling..
I get a lot of questions about “Plantation Retreat”…so here are some basic facts:
My goal in creating and hosting Plantation Retreat is to provide a safe and welcoming, private place (and opportunity) for White Masters and plantation slaves/niggers to meet and explore their mutual fantasies. I get a lot of questions and answer many individual questions. To simplify things…here is some general basic information:
The gathering lasts for up to 2 weeks this year, with the main gathering around the 4th of July…folks can stay as long or as short a time as they want (some stay even longer). Masters can stay at the compound here or in a hotel if they want to (as can any personal slaves that they bring with them or any other slave that is ordered to do so).
Slaves arriving on their own stay here and are considered (and protected) as property of the plantation or my personal property.
Slaves sign up for a specific length of service. Slaves can specify what their limits are or that they will serve in any way the Master/guests desire. Sex is not required, but depends on individual choice (as do other activities). Most Masters desire to use slaves sexually in addition to normal domestic services. Some slaves are used only for hard labor. A slave’s assignments and duties are based on its experience and ability-level (some require whipping or punishment). Masters have their own king or queen bed (up to 5 available); slaves sleep where they are told to sleep (unless they are ordered into a Master’s bed and allowed to sleep there). Normally a slave sleeps at the foot of a Master’s bed, but some can be chained or caged elsewhere.
The minimum requirement for slaves is that they be obedient and respectful of all Masters and work to give the Masters and enjoyable time. This can be anything from preparing and serving drinks and meals, doing housework or yard work, to providing sexual relief on demand, to hard labor in the compound (depending on the slave’s previously-stated limitations). Slaves should expect Masters to be totally comfortable and free in using humiliating or degrading racist speech in referring to or speaking to mud-slaves. It’s not all punishment and misery for slaves…there is plenty of time for camaraderie and playful fun also. Some slaves even form a brotherly bond with the other slaves that serve with them. Masters also form lasting bonds and friendships based on their mutual interests and sharing slaves.
It’s just a small friendly gathering of White Masters at my house/compound….being served by mud-slaves as might have been in a modern version of slave-days. one might call it a situation of consensual non-consent/slavery. Slaves can set their limits and the time they will be in service as slaves in advance…. and also what they expect to learn and experience from the experience. The more that a slave lets me know about itself in advance, the better I can guide its growth from the experience.
Backstage racism mates with BDSM, the eroticization of the black body, and finds a place online through a variant of cyber-racism. Amazing. We do in fact live in interesting times.White supremacy is a mental illness. Western (and global) society is sick with it. All of us, across the color line, have been impacted by white supremacy and white racism. But who are we to judge how adults in a consensual relationship decide to work through its pain and ugliness?
As is per my tradition, here are some concluding questions.
Have any of you engaged in race play? For those of you in inter-racial relationships, how do you negotiate these bigger questions of race and the erotic? If our kinks and sexual predilections are in some way a function of life experience, trauma, early childhood experiences, etc. what happened in the life of a black person who is willing to play a slave for the pleasures of white racists?
Tell me what you think!
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Kyle Phoenix on YouTube, Twitter and Quora
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday 11:30pm simulcast
Kyle PhoenixOctober 29, 2013 at 6:04 PM
On first blush of this article I was shocked but then I gave it a through read and some deeper thought. During my undergraduate years I took a class at SUNY Buffalo on Slavery and Sadomasochism, the relationship between the two. It was intense to say the least and initially started out as 60 titillated students and ended with about 8 of us who took the work, readings, ideas seriously as did the professor. It was taught by a Black woman.
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Kyle PhoenixOctober 29, 2013 at 6:05 PM
I often bring up this class when talking about my first exposure to the ideas of BDSM because I went all superstar student and bought not only all the reading list books but all the reference books---a semester ahead of time---as was my practice with classes---so I was well read on the material by the time I got to the classroom. There were some things like the Q Letters that were simply too extreme for my young mind to process as pleasure but I could understand how others could find joy in it. We also dealt with the confrontation of race in relationship to pain and BDSM slavery and chattel slavery.
This article pressed me to consider a thought deeper that I've personally taught about for years---slavery for African Americans and Latinos is more of an imposed memory than an actual memory. Unfortunately we didn't possess the infrastructure and resources to record that Holocaust as the Jews have done with the Shoah project and museum. To have firsthand accounts of what happened and how it felt. The closest we may have are grandparents who remember sharecropping. In many ways we're denied accurate explanations by both slave and owners of the nightmare. And I would theorize that it's nightmarishly shameful and embarrassing qualities are why we've allowed it to go unrecorded in first person interviews though conceivably it could've happened at the turn of the century after the Civil War.
Kyle PhoenixOctober 29, 2013 at 6:06 PM
I bring up those that personal school tale and my theory to say that I can access this. I don't know if I agree with it. I don't know if it's my position to agree with this. I have never felt it is my position to agree on anyone else's sexuality (as long as it's consensual and doesn't harm children) just as I will not allow someone the illusion to believe that they have the right to consent, accept or agree to my sexuality. My crotch is not for anyone's casual inspection and discrimination. But I bend that rule of sovereignty back upon myself. From that I can hold BDSM neutrally and role-playing slavery neutrally.
When I incorporate that people of color, myself included think about slavery often---compare so much to it, have it as an imposed memory nexus in our reality frameworks---I both cringe and nod in understanding. I often push people to look at the practice people of color have of reminding one another about our history IN slavery. We constantly remind each other whether it's in word--nigger---or deed---labeling discrimination---whether we can prove it or not as racially based. In many ways White people have maintained the institutions of slavery but people of color have maintained the emotionality and psychic field of slavery. And yes, with good reason, we were most impacted by it negatively. Yet I've always wondered what were the positives. I generally wonder this when I see people of color in extreme, crushing poverty---I wonder what was the difference. I wonder if perhaps having something to do, having some purpose, even slavery is better than drugs or sexual prostitution or multi-generational poverty. It's a harsh joke---but slavery insured people of color job security. That psychic security, that knowledge that one had a Master who managed life and all of it's complexities must and is attractive. I say is because isn't that what BDSM includes, someone managing your mind and reality for you?
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Kyle PhoenixOctober 29, 2013 at 6:06 PM
Would I go to this retreat? Yes. I don't know how I would access it---because I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate me and my pad (or video camera) present but I would need to see "slavery". Consensual slavery. I think maybe the revulsion that we've shown everything but Roots the TV show, to "see", to look slavery has to do with our inability to deal with race----an illusory construct. If race and racism are dreams, then slavery was a nightmare---obviously an erotic nightmare for some---and I say "some" because we, of color, carry slavery with us now. As a shared memory, as an accusatory spear to chuck at White people constantly (I consult in public schools---our brown children are hurling race at their White teachers as weapons that they know deeply unnerves them---because ultimately White people now have no idea how to manage race either.)
I'm spinning, I know. I find that race does that to any conversation because it is a mental illness---white supremacy---as the article says. It's impossible to cogently discuss madness. In sum, I think what the White and Black folk are doing at this retreat is accessing the invisible Power Foucault talks about---they're accessing it to inter-relatedly examine race and racism in the most primal and intimate ways possible. They are making the imposed memory of slavery real.
I was thinking to myself---if I were to sign up, find my caveats for what I would and wouldn't allow---could I endure 2 weeks? Who and what would I be and how would I view my current world---full of cell phones, computers, authorship, teaching at universities, freedom to walk free, eat anything---would I get it? Would I understand the intense expanse of my freedom if I were to abdicate freedom? Would this be of incredible value to people of color? Since we have no Shoah---perhaps we need to concretized our imposed memories? Would I be willing to cross the final "No" and give sexual permission in that context.
Would I understand why the concept that so many people of color hold: "I wouldn't have been a slave" can only exist when you're in no way threatened by that subjugation? Could I, intelligently, cunning, strong, free---be made a slave so easily?
While I don't have an erotic interest in BDSM, I think this retreat is incredibly intriguing on so many levels that I'll investigate it further.
Anti-gay stigma sparks rise in black male HIV rates
Opinion by Dr. Kevin Fenton
HIV rates increase by half among young black gay, bisexual men
Homophobia and HIV linked in black men
Black gay couples use condoms more than whites
Changing face of HIV in black communities over 30 years
5 myths that must go in war against HIV-AIDS
Black America is fighting back harder than ever against HIV and AIDS. Thanks to courageous leadership and a surge of new action by community leaders, it is now possible to reach those in our community at greatest risk of infection and reduce the toll that this terrible epidemic has taken on the black community.
While we should take pride in what has been achieved — progress remains fragile. HIV infections are stable among blacks overall and among black women, but among our young black gay and bisexual men, they are increasing. Black gay and bisexual men of all ages account for 73 percent of new infections among black men, and the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that the burden of HIV is growing among some of the youngest members of our community.
CDC just reported that HIV infections are up sharply among black gay and bisexual men under the age of 30 — the only race and risk group in the United States to experience a significant increase between 2006 and 2009. While data show that HIV infections increased by almost 50 percent among these young men in just four years, HIV surveillance data only tell only half the story.
Click here to view a Grio slideshow: 30 years of HIV/AIDS in black America
We can’t say for sure why this increase occurred, but we have a good sense of some of the reasons. We know that young black gay men often face a double hurdle in staying healthy and HIV-free: economic hardships that prevent many in African-American communities from seeing a doctor, and the stigma and homophobia that can damage the well-being of many gay men.
Additionally, young black gay men are more likely than men of other races to have sexual relationships with older men, which can increase their risk of being exposed to HIV simply because older gay men are more likely to be HIV positive.
Young African-Americans — male or female, gay or straight — also have higher rates of certain sexually transmitted diseases that can make it easier to transmit HIV.
MSNBC: New HIV infections up 50 percent in gay black men
Additionally, a recent study of 21 major cities found that the majority of young black gay and bisexual men who were HIV-infected were unaware of their HIV status. These high rates of unawareness, coupled with the fact that young gay men tend to underestimate their chances of getting infected, are contributing to the increasing numbers of HIV infections we are seeing today.
When considering all of this information, the challenge before us is clear: we cannot end the black AIDS epidemic without confronting HIV among black gay men, and the stigma and homophobia that allows HIV to flourish in our communities.
The stigma of homosexuality runs deep in many of our communities. For young men who are just coming to terms with their sexuality, the weight of this stigma can be crushing. Tragically, it keeps many too fearful to seek the life-saving HIV prevention, testing and treatment services they need.
To protect the health of the next generation, each of us needs to confront the stigma that forces too many of our sons, brothers and friends into the shadows, and prevents them from seeking HIV prevention services that can help reverse the current trend.
I know full well the toll that stigma, silence and ignorance continue to play in the lives of so many young gay men today. As I work in cities and towns across the country, I meet young black gay men who share stories of being rejected by their families or their faith communities because of their sexual orientation.
Many of these young men are driven to high risk conditions, including homelessness, incarceration, sex for survival, or power-imbalanced relationships in which they may be unable to negotiate safe behaviors with their partners.
But, I also hear just as many stories of resilience and strength from so many of our young gay brothers — both HIV positive and negative — who are making choices to protect themselves and their communities.
These men are educating others because they are determined to break the cycle of HIV, and they give me hope that HIV does not have to be a right of passage for young black gay men. Whether in Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta or Little Rock, ending the HIV in the black community will require that we all work together. Understanding the realities of this disease, fighting the stigma which continues to fuel its spread, and supporting those who are most vulnerable are steps that every one of us can take.
Some of the nation’s most prominent black leaders are taking up this challenge and speaking out about the need to show the same compassion for black gay and bisexual men as other members of the African-American family — an example we should all strive to follow.
At CDC, we’re working with African-American leaders and organizations to achieve this vision. We’re expanding HIV prevention programs for African-Americans at risk; we've launched awareness and education campaigns to help young African-Americans — gay and straight — understand their risks, get tested and protect themselves; and we recently expanded our partnerships with leading African-American organizations, to help them address the threat of HIV.
We have enlisted the help of well-known organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League, and other respected organizations with deep roots in the African-American community that specifically address the needs of black gay men in their local communities, such as the International Federation of Black Prides.
President Obama’s leadership also gives reason for hope. The administration’s new National HIV/AIDS Strategy, announced last year, calls on all of us to focus HIV prevention efforts where the needs are greatest — and that clearly includes black gay men.
I hope these efforts will bring us closer to a day when all African-Americans have the tools and support they need to stay HIV-free. Each of us needs to do our part: speak out against stigma, get tested for HIV and commit our own time and energy to the fight. Our battle against HIV and AIDS has come too far to do anything less.
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Kyle Phoenix on YouTube, Twitter and Quora
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday 11:30pm simulcast
Django's Unchained But You're Not by Kyle Phoenix
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I got a flurry of what do you think? and can you believe it? emails this past week while on vacation all around the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained starring Janie Foxx. First it was about the film and then it was about the merchandising, specifically the action figures that came out. First off the film is wild and fun and violent and hilarious and poignant, I've seen it twice. There's the play on racial humor and horror and the righteousness of vengeance and retribution woven through the fable of Broomhilda (Brunhilde) the German opera/folktale/myth.
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But it's not a film that Americans---Black, White, Puerto Rican---can deal with. Americans aren't healthy enough nor self-reflectively honest enough to deal with it. Django Unchained is the graduate level course and most of America is still mentally trudging through middle school trying to wrap its' collective head around the perplexing conundrum of separating racial solidarity and genuine criticism towards the President. What do I mean by this? America has never dealt with slavery. America moved through it, outlawed it, wagged it's finger at it and marshaled the moral strength to castigate the word nigger but has never dealt with slavery. What do I mean by "dealt"? South Africa dealt with apartheid and how to move beyond it with reconciliation councils that went from township to township and every citizen was obligated to attend to listen and express their pain, White and African, from the brutality and pain of apartheid.
It's made pointedly clear within the first 5 minutes of the movie, illustrated deftly with the casting off of a shroud that Django is no longer a slave. Yet the criticisms of their being a Django action figure choke on there being "slave dolls". He's not a slave. No, really go watch the first 5 minutes of the film. The character struggles to adjust to his internal freedom matching and not matching the varying degrees of slavery that exist around him in the 1850's South. But he's not a slave. He continues through the movie on a quest to free Broomhilda from slavery and throughout it though he has to get morally, socially and violently dirty even when captured and possibly on his way back to slavery he uses every weapon in his mind, pocket and environment to not return to slavery. He's not a slave.
Yes, I know I've repeated that several times. Why? Because that's America psychic schism---whether you're pink or brown---once a nigger slave, always a nigger slave. White people believe it. Black folk believe it. Latino folk believe it. There might even be some Asian people who believe it. And that's the fundamental problem of why we as human beings in America can't handle Django, The film has a metaphor of the reaction of White and Black people to seeing Django riding a horse with shock, anger, virulent madness, disbelief, revulsion, sexual interest and confusion because that's how America has trained itself to see Black people, pointedly Black men, even more directly, Black men who make no qualms about whipping White men, shooting White men, outsmarting White men, having bloody vengeance upon White men as outrageous. As outrageous as say a billionaire donning a cowl ad deciding from his perch of the noblesse oblige what justice should and shouldn't look like in his fiefdom.
While I'm there, and this has been a thought for a while, maybe it has to do with mass shootings around America by children upon children (and those committed by adults everyday), but there is a madness in movies. We go and sit in dark theaters to watch people kill each other. In fact we cheer and celebrate celebrities for this aberration. I was thinking while watching the previews for several movies that the casualness with which heroes and heroines kill in the movies is technically psychotic. We're watching, studying, idolizing psychopaths armed to the teeth killing cops, armed security, unarmed security, innocent bystanders, the "enemy", the bad guys, monsters. We're gorging ourselves on a diet of psychosis.
But back to the nigger slave dolls. Yes, the word nigger is hurled back and forth like oxygen in the movie. But then I live in New York City and teach everything from children to adults. I've heard nigger so much that I have forsaken it as anything unless we're really talking about the origins and usages of that word. Kind of like fuck. America has a long memory but a short attention span. We've launched into this fearful diatribe about eradicating nigger, removing nigger, abolishing the word nigger but why? I would submit it's a way to make White people comfortable and for Black people to move past a label/categorization that's not supportive of evolving freedom. Even the word itself has diametrically different, maybe not opposing, ends for White and Black people. (The Latinos, Asians and Native Americans hurling nigger back and forth we'll just have to put in the category of children who pick up bad habits from the people around them.)
Honestly, White people, deeply infused with America'a long memory know that this slavery shit is like a rumbling cancer that has slowly infected the entire system of this land through the delivery system of racism. Black people have always known it has and would and some, not all, some are trying to evolve into freedom. Freedom isn't something you can just don and ride off triumphantly, it's a long process, perhaps even a 200 to 400 year process. Chemo can often take longer to flush out a disease than the disease took to manifest. Who knows. Some would argue that having a half Black (African---which if you come to 125th Street in Harlem you'll quickly learn the difference between) President is the pinnacle of freedom evolution. It's not. When we have presidents and they happen to be female or Latino or Asian or half African or completely Black then we've made true progress Until then I would submit that we've made incremental aberration change. Change is only supported by consistency not merely appearance. But I digress....
So I'll throw up another point. Black is projected. White people hundreds of years ago needed a way to classify the Other from them for social, financial and mental/emotional reasons which is why you have Black, Latino, mulatto (from mule), quadroon (a fourth Black blood), octoroon (an eighth blood), and so on. Number one, that was really the dragon eating it's own tail. The very classifications show a level of social insanity to keep isolating people by arbitrary measurements to explain away, justify and mitigate racial mixing.
And why was there racial mixing? Because you can't put one group of people, with absolute power and no television, smack dab in the center of lots of beautiful brown people who have no rights but are buxom and robust and sinewy under the hot sun and not have forcible creeping, dalliances fantasies entertained, rapes, true love, distorted Sally Hemmings love, passionate embraces and just human rubber part curiosity. So when you call yourself or others even "Black" we're perpetuating a negative racial designation that was created to identify and control not celebrate. Black is the new nigger. (Peep this there's only a few people, Africans who are really so dark as to fall under Black and yet because we must, African Americans hold onto Black. Much like the rape victim holds onto the fact that they were on a date therefore it couldn't be rape.)
Now all this racial confusion, madness, history, drama, conflama and media violence psychosis goes into a dark theater and tries to reconcile itself against the Pollock-like whip-lashing strokes and artistic hurlings of Quentin Tarantino.
Baby, you can't even get out of slavery in your own head, how you gonna do it at the AMC theater?
Because of the interruption of freedom evolution African American people (and I include Latinos in this too. When they know their history and genetic history they understand that they are just more diluted African Americans who got a new language imposed on them too in their slavery times. It was sort of a racial/slave bonus round for our current Latinos from the French/Spanish.) weren't given free reign in art. Bear with me. This all ties together. When you go see Batman you accept that a White man has the right to be a vigilante. When you go see Jack Reacher, you accept it. Even when you watch Terminator you accept it. But the Blackened people of America don't have that right do they? Because it's revolting IMPOSSIBLE. I often muse on time travel films, when would I travel to as a Black man? There is no time in American history when you were allowed to be Black and vengeful. Say like a General Custer or General Lee or a John F. Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Bush to Clinton to Bush to Obama ALL ordering and engaging America in military actions spiraling from policy to politics to racism to vengeance. No when.
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But when was the last time outside of an S&M Dungeon have you seen a Black man take the lash to a White man? Wait, wait, how many times have you seen a White man shoot a Black man? Go even deeper, how many times have you seen a White man shoot a monster/alien that was brown? Or even directly black? Where does that leave a psyche to what is okay for White men and not for Black men?
There's a doll.
Yet there was no uprising at the Terminator doll and go back to the movie and see how many innocent police officers and innocent bystanders he killed in pursuit of the Connors. What about Die Hard (and I happen to like Bruce Willis) did you protest those dolls? What about Superman and Batman? Of course not, because even in FICTION/ART niggers are still slave niggers ad should abide by plantation rules of narrow identity. Narrow identity says you can't love so the concept of Django having a wife and being willing to turn the South upside down to liberate her is something that we've never seen in a movie before, a man rescuing the damsel in distress.
No, that's completely new.
Or a Western with gunslingers and bounty hunters killing the criminals with ready triggers and rifles.
Nah, that's never occurred in cinema before.
Nor has there been a man who has had to go undercover and be cruel towards those like him to liberate himself, his wife and even the slaves at the end---nah, not a single movie has used that theme before.
Okay, what about racial/misogynistic/foul/gruff language being hurled about by men and women in the history of cinema?
Nope, movies have been squeaky language clean for over 100 years.
Oh, wait, he's a nigger in America.
And by default if you're a nigger you must be a slave and by deeper default if you're a slave you must take care of, comfort, not oppose, pray for the cruel White people and hope that circumstance and dear sweet Lordy Lord brings vengeance upon them. Because being a figure, a symbol, even in fictionalized art of bloody vengeance, punctilious power and manhood for a Black man is well----anathema to the American way.
See how that long memory and short attention span are America's unique way of keeping a nigger in a double-blind?
Only when you put him into the slave nigger category can you look at the art and say it can't commercalized, consumerize, action figurize itself. What you're saying is that a nigger, fictional or real, doesn't have the right to be any part of the lily White psychotic milk you've been guzzling down from Casablanca to Indiana Jones to Star Wars to the Matrix to Batman to Spider-man to the Hobbit (chock full of minorities!). You want your milk, cake and to consume it without anybody who doesn't match the table cloth to be part of irreproachable fury, indignation, anger, romantic hero tales back to the Ramayana or Tristan and Isolde or Coptic Christianity or Hannibal or Vesey or Toussaint or even to the first Western revolutionary, the imperial Anacoana. People of color, colored folk, brown as the ground who were pushed, beaten, tested and tried to the point of being willing to wreck all kinds of natural havoc upon White people. Because we all know niggers are not allowed the full range of human expression, right? Right?
You might want a hero. But box office receipts show who America believes its' heroes should look like and what they should be allowed to do. Interestingly enough the question is in these wants are you White, Black, Latino, Asian or Native American (the 5 racial categories here in America.) You want a nigger. And when you realize how much, no matter what color you are, you want a nigger to remain a nigger, the racialized school system makes sense, Native people on tiny reservations, multi-colored ghettos illiteracy and 60 million in poverty makes sense. You want a nigger....even if you're technically one.
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Now me, and perhaps some others, we're evolving towards freedom and we can separate fiction/art from reality---much as people are able to do when they see any of our delightful White action heroes and don't leave the theater screaming when they see a White man or doll. (Well, maybe we all tense up a little bit in our heads and sphincters---I mean look at the statistics of who goes major ballistic and wants to take the whole neighborhood, household or school with them....I'm just saying....) I will finally submit though that having been bred to be niggers who are slaves and slaves who are just niggers and being only a generation or two away from slavery, some Black folk get nervous. They get nervous at what White people will think of them if they talk about race in a normal level voice (watch this amongst your brown friends---how they hush down the word White or say "them" as if we all don't know the racial truth with our eyes of who's a what) or avoid the thought of say a nigger being on a horse metaphorically speaking. Or worse yet having a gun. Or even more insanely shooting White people.
But I would throw in that White people don't worry about this because they know there's only one Django per 10,000 Black men so the majority will keep the minority down. (Ironically enough, this is brought up by Monsieur Candie played by Leonardo DiCaprio though his villainous character goes at why Black people, who outnumbered White slaveholders a hundred to one, didn't lash out, rise up, go on a bloody rampage. Of course there wasn't time to mention Haiti or the 39 other slave revolts that occurred in the United States as well as the dozen that occurred on the open sea. Pssst. We did not go into slavery easy.)
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I bought a doll to play with and one for my son too and I have some other fun dolls: I've got a Che, a Toussaint, a Malcolm, a Carmen, a Carver, I even have a Troi doll to remind me to have empathy. But I also have an Anacoana to remind me of the duality of that your own people might be too dazzled to listen to good sense the moment before they're slaughtered. I have a bullwhip and a righteous gleam in my eye and a non-hushed tone when I talk/teach about race because the White people know they're White and it's the perpetuation of being the comforting nigger when we hush tone for them. They'll be fine if they're a little uncomfortable passing by me as I chatter along in public. There are some of us who would would raze lands and people in bloody, righteous vengeance if provoked or for our loved ones. I know of the vengeance I speak of. Yeah, about 1 in 10,000 by my count too in agreement with the film. The ways brown folk, especially men, seek to maintain niggerdom is legion and for another article. I've sadly learned to watch my brown people, I've watched them whether they've come to help me or cheat me or criticize me for being simply being free in mind, body and spirit. Because after all, as we learned on February 21, 1965, it was a Black man who sent a Black man that shot Malcolm.Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Kyle Phoenix on YouTube, Twitter and Quora
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday 11:30pm simulcast
Two Narratives the Black Community Needs to Give Up in the New Year
by Yolo Akili, Writer from HuffPost: Black Voices
2013 is here, and it's time folks.
It's time to leave behind the tired stories and unhealthy narratives that hurt our communities.
It's time to re-commit our focus to the brilliance, beauty and resilience we possess, so that these things can grow exponentially and overshadow the death, gloom and despair that the media and many of us have focused on.
This is not about delusion. It is not about pretending that problems do not exist. This is about re-adjusting our gaze. It's about getting as motivated about the things people are doing to help our communities as we are when a celebrity says something racist, or when a white film maker produces a film that distorts or minimizes our historical experiences. This is about getting excited and celebrating what we have going for ourselves as a community.
This is about finding a new lens on life.
So in honor of the new year, I'd like to offer you (and me) an opportunity to abandon two narratives in particular that have done a grave disservice to black communities. They are the "Ain't No Good Black Men" and the " Black People are Deficit in Every Damn Thing" narratives. Leaving them behind may not be easy, but by questioning these narratives and our commitment to them, we may come to some fairly surprising conclusions.
There are No "Good" Black Men:
There is an entire industry that has been created around the idea of there not being any "good black men." Everyone from media moguls to R&B singers rely on it in order to sell products to emotionally starved black heterosexual women and black gay men.
In consuming their products, black heterosexual women in particular are either lulled into a sense of fantasy or beaten into psychological submission because of a perceived inability to express an "authentic" male defined womanhood. This narrative is not only present in black heterosexual middle class women's lives, but in black gay male culture, where ideas of the lack of "good masculine" men echo very similar themes.
"Good," in the context of "good black men" often means a number of things: how much money he makes, how "hard" his gender expression appears and his ability to perform sexually are among them.
Good in this context is not about black men's inherent value as human beings. No, good in this context is about external realities. It is about our ability to produce income, and perform a rigid idea of masculinity that we are learning is not only unhealthy for us, but unhealthy for black women and the black community at large.
Good in this context is not defined by ones' ability to care for children. Good is not defined by one's ability to care for home, or to express emotionality. Those traits are dismissed and belittled, both by black men and their potential suitors. This narrative has created incalculable chaos in our relations in the black community. That's why it's time to let it go.
It's time to recognize a few things:
Black men's inability to acquiesce to rigid of ideals of masculinity is not a commentary, nor a reflection of our worth. Our "goodness" is not defined through our ability to produce income. Our goodness is not measured by our desire to be monogamous. Our goodness is not about our ability to be heterosexual. Our goodness is not reflected in our car. Our goodness is inherent, as children of the universe. Yes, It may be marred, by the psychological conditioning of our communities that make it hard for us to effectively deal with our emotional trauma. It may be subdued by the rage that we have been taught is our only acceptable emotional option. But it is not gone. Our goodness is in us. And no other narrative from this day forward should ever be acceptable.
2012 Narrative: Ain't no good black men.
Its 2013 replacement: Good black men are everywhere, waiting for someone to see and celebrate the good they posses and already are.
Black People are Deficient In Every Damn Thing:
This one really doesn't need much explaining. Turn on the news, switch to your Facebook feed, or browse your twitter timeline. It wont' be long before you will come across articles, videos, memes and essays that rave on about how #%$% up black people are. They will tell you a statistic about how white people are better. They will tell you about what black people don't do right. They will not tell you about the issues that white people have that are never pathologized because, well, they are white.
They will instead tell you about how we as black people are wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
But lack is not synonymous with black and black is not a metaphor for wrong. Still many believe this, and because they do you will not hear about the innovative ways in which black people are taking back our communities. They will not tell you about the black men and women honoring andcelebrating their children's gender and sexual diversity They will not tell you about the barbershopsworking to address health issues, or the churches challenging homophobia. There will be no stats that show how many black people are taking up vegetarianism to address dietary concerns. No stats that tell how many of us are not imprisoned. In the "black people are deficient in everything" narrative, none of that information is necessary, nor is it exciting. What is exciting is our death and demise. Our imbalanced focus on these things erases and minimizes the skills and talents we have.
This narrative has also severely hurt our sense of self worth. It is time to let it go.
2012 Narrative: Black people are deficient in every damn thing.
Its 2013 replacement: Black people are an abundant embodiment of brilliance, crafting new ways of being and thriving from our boundless creative legacy.
2012 is at an end. At its end we have choices to make. Will we continue to commit ourselves to unhealthy narratives that deny and dismiss the power and inherent brilliance of our community? Are we going to be honest with ourselves about how deeply internalized forces have impacted our perceptions of each other and work to change them? Can we simply take a moment as a collective to celebrate what we have learned and what we are doing? Yes we can. And we don't have to sacrifice acknowledging the pain. We don't have to sacrifice acknowledging the injustice. We can hold both, in balance, and move forward with a full and more cohesive vision of who we are for 2013 and beyond.
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Kyle Phoenix on YouTube, Twitter and Quora
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday 11:30pm simulcast
10 Things That Make The Ku Klux Klan Ecstatic!!!
You down with KKK?
I'm down with KKK!
Keepin' it real!
The Klan has a long and distinguished history. It is literally the physical manifestation of racism in America that every human, and small animals, can point to as the definitive example. In the late 1800s after the Civil War and the terror that the "darkies" would lose it and help White people lose their head from being attached to their bodies for slavery, the KKK was formed. They went 19th century Racebook----riding horses from town to town, scrawling letters in the standard 3rd grade education most Southerns (and quite a few Northerners) enjoyed. But gosh darn it, faster than you can get 5000 Friends and go from a Person to a Page, a psychopathic paranoid semi-militia had been formed. They did things----lynchings, intimidation, gunshots, running darkies off or back on to plantations It was literally the Racebook virtual reality/Halo Mix-tape.
Bit then slowly laws were changed and amended and more immigrants started flooding the welcoming shores of America. There was the odd barn burning and yearly BBQs over slain Civil Rights leaders but by the 1980s the KKK was dwindling, it was empty, it was so forgotten that people were surprised when they checked back into it. Like MySpace.
Sure there was your parades and rallies and shocking political appointees who showed that their hood sheet now came in 100% Egyptian cotton with a clever Hermes tie. But the blatant, orgasmic in your face-ness of the KKK was narrowing. Racism, ever the American trendsetter, had gone subtle; it had edged into the underground in-conscious of selected recipients of the Caucasian persuasion. Racial Berlin Wall cracker Nelson Mandela was free and with it went the Europeanized Aliens-esque brood queen, Apartheid into the gaping maw of Black space (but always up for a sequel.)
1. Black and Latinos Not Reading
North America has the unique distinction of having libraries within every ten square blocks (except for desert spots). You can go into these buildings---heated, lit, quiet and read about anything and anybody. Hell, you can take the books out of the building, borrowing them so you can even sit at home alone, moving your lips while reading. Amazingly enough within one generations time Black and Latinos have forgotten that it was illegal for them to read and now we leave mental money on every 10 blocks and they ignore it! They have the highest dropout rates and lowest literacy scores by race on the planet with the exception of their boon boon cousins who live in true deserts!
2. Black and Latinos Saying They "Hate" Math
Compound interest arises when interest is added to the principal, so that, from that moment on, the interest that has been added also earns interest. This addition of interest to the principal is called compounding. A bank account, for example, may have its interest compounded every year: in this case, an account with $1000 initial principal and 20% interest per year would have a balance of $1200 at the end of the first year, $1440 at the end of the second year, and so on.
The effect of earning 20% annual interest on an
initial $1,000 investment at various compounding frequencies
3. Black and Latino Men Consciously Barebacking/Spreading HIV
4. Black and Latino People Buying Apple IPhones, BMW, Microsoft, Louis Vuitton Products and Paying Rent
Real estate is "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; (also) an item of real property; (more generally) buildings or housing in general. Also: the business of real estate; the profession of buying, selling, or renting land, buildings or housing.
73% of all wealth on Earth is held in real estate.
30% of people of color in America own real estate but not the other companies. What does that make all of the purchasers of goods who don't own anything but the products? Loving devotees.
5. Black and Latino People Spending Inordinate Amounts of Time on Facebook
The Klan considers the 100 million
the bum door opener tip.
(Reasons 1 & 2 apply to
"fixing" the education system.
Does it matter if you
enhance the system for people
who only a percentage will READ and do MATH?
"Here you go."
Announcing they're going to sleep. Announcing they're awake. Posting pics of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson tributes. Sharing music videos of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. Complaining about sagging pants. Announcing the Lord's intentions, wishes, blessings, thoughts, feelings, anger and occasionally personal attentions.
Some will point out the 100 million donation to Newark by Mark Zuckerberg.
The Klan considers that no Black or Latino has ever been able to drop out of Harvard to create anything on the internet that has 1 billion users and is worth over 100 billion dollars.
6. Black and Latino People With Cell Phones
Blackberry's cost $500 plus a 1 or 2 yearly contract which is about $100 a month. So when they give you a near free Blackberry, you've paid over $2000 for it. IPhones cost $300 to $800 plus a 1 or 2 yearly contract which is about $100 a month. So when they don't give you a near free IPhone, you've paid over $4000 for it.
Curiously enough Motorola, Verizon, Apple, Blackberry nor their subsidiaries donate to education, social care, for the near 70% of Blacks and Latinos who are paying so much. However the good news is that this is where Reasons overlap. See if they didn't Hate Math they'd figure out the massive profit upswing. Of course that would then integrate into Reason # 1 but the real irony is----all of these pieces of technology can look up the answers and they never use it!!!!!!!!
7. The Maury Povich Show
You could understand young people with children wanting the male parent to assume responsibility That's not racial, that's universal. But check this---the audience is full of Black and Latino people looking at Black and Latino people humiliate themselves for a trip to Connecticut and a paternity test. No, no, wait for it---sometimes there are multiple children and the Black or Latino man is adamant proud and joyous when he finds out he's not a father to some girl he's been doing the horizontal bounce with. She dashes off in torrential shame but she'l be back because like a good mother to the children who will one day review this on YouTube---she's got a list of other possible men it could be. Name by name, literally counting the seats on the train she's pulled---to an average 2-3 million viewers a day. No, no, no----wait for itttttttttttttt----while a White man sits next to this foolery grinning in sweats! because he doesn't even dress up for the approximate 10 million a year (as a partial owner of the show) he gets for being the ringmaster to Dr. King's legacy. The respect for Black and Latino women and the integrity of their men is a ratings boom!
8. Big Beautiful Black Women Who Are Too Proud Of It
Diabetes.
Heart disease.
High blood pressure.
Shorter Lifespans
Amputated limbs
Look at the damn picture.
Enough said.*
*The Klan though can rightfully defend that when they could own the broodmares, they were much thinner and healthier. They can actually statistically and historically prove that chattel slavery was better for some because some have trouble regulating how to do a basic human function. A function that humans have been doing for 2 million years. 2 million years.
**Yes, yes, The Klan is aware that all races, mainly in America are obese but they have been thinking about how diabetes is more likely to effect the brown folk.....and the brown folk rail against a mayor who says that a 96 ounce, 1500+ calorie is a bit too much to be so readily available. Because well......aw, hell.......look at her. Somehow we're all paying extra taxes on the front end health care or the back end exit strategy of her.
9. Black and Latino People Harassing Their Own
94% of Black and Latino murders are committed by Blacks and Latinos. 4% of the murder rate are White people. The Klan is positive that even if a decent feeling for a race war could be mustered, Black and Latino people would shoot, beat, injure, betray, maim, decapitate each other in the planning phase.
10. Blacks and Latinos Treating Each Other With Discrimination
Check this: the current brown people are so subdivided---by the racial categorizing system created by their oppressors they think they're different.
LM(W)AO
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You can't make this shit up.
The birth of a (brown) nation is televised and remote controlled through a brown President that nearly all of them ran to vote for. Yes, the revolution is being televised....it's called BET.
The problem is whom you think the revolution is against.
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Kyle Phoenix on YouTube, Twitter and Quora
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Race: Things Fatherless Black & Latino Men Beget
What I want to do is compare overall statistics to some of the remedies/enhancements boys to men can get from fathers and male mentors. Unfortunately poverty has become matriarchal more to the point Black & Latino families expect to be single parent headed, mainly by women. While we revere the women for doing this we never connect what their lack of abilities in key areas creates as an outcome.
We're going to assume that fathers referenced below in the abstract are good, healthy men even if maybe they divorce the mother of their children. They still stay intensely devoted and supportive to their children.
If 30 to 40% of Blacks and Latinos in America are in poverty and 70% of their households are women headed, what does that create?
If only 35% of men of color are college educated, what does that bode for their families/children?
If for 20 years the CDC has been tracking that men of color are increasing in HIV and other STI infection through MSM, why is that? That men below 30 are potentially as high as 45% infected amongst Black and Latino communtieis, , what does that say for the ones infecting them? Who are they? And if they're the same race as the ones they infect, why would a Black or Latino man infect another Black or Latino man?
Why is it so difficult for you to find a Good Man?
WHat's going on? What's really going on?
Lack of Education
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As a teacher, I'm biased to education. In fact I often tease my students that like a criminal profiler I can identify educational levels by quick observation of people in public or in fast social contact. But I also can see in my Black and Latino students what a lack of fathers has done to them. Grown men are what boys want to emulate. Boys want to be men, particularly the men in their immediate range. If the man is educated, he wants his sons to be educated, to be able to navigate the world, to understand what he does and even progress further than he has. What I learned personally from my father was that there was no whining, there was no simpering, there was no mewling when it was time to go to school because he'd grown up in a segregated South where education was not a guarantee to brown children and I sure as hell wasn't going to take education for granted. He'd worked his way from Louisiana to New York to a bachelors and then a Masters degree, no education wasn't even a remote possibility. Why? Because I wanted to live basically. lolLack of Motivation
My father and stepfathers kept me attentive to moving along in my life, doing the right things, staying out of trouble and focused on becoming a man. Women can't teach you how to surmount a psychological passage into manhood because they've never done it. In fact women can observe when a boy is male and male is a man but they don't know nor have the skill set to transition a boy to manhood. Simply can't be done. Men are needed for that. Now throw in our statistic of 70% of Black and Latino males growing up without fathers and you're surprised you have saggy pants as a fashion trend? Do you what kind of natural hell walking around, purposefully having my ass hanging out would have garnered from my fathers. Why? Because men see the boys/males under their wings as representations of themselves So a healthy man can't have no busted, flagrant foolishness under his aegis. Even as a mentor I jettison young males who I discuss decorum and decency with who continuously breech that; mentoring allows one the space to understand that you can't save everyone and there's always someone new behind the jettisoned one to help/. The jettisoned rarely understand that they've lost out on a lifetime enhancing relationship and you've just lost a little time in refining your mentoring skill.Lack of Manhood (Addiction to Masculinity)
MSM are often raging about wanting masculine men, checking the masculinity level of men, guys being effeminate, not being real men---and then they rush to the gym to pump up their bodies to look as masculine as possible However in contrast look around you at all shapes and sizes of men, fathers with their children. Manhood is generosity and strength and caring and going to work to support and provide for children and spouses and family. The distortion of lack of men teaching males, even homosexual males, about manhood means that boys/males will grasp at whatever they can. Whatever they can translate to hypersexuality, hyper concern over masculinity, and even the fear of intimacy.
I would stretch so far as to suggest that it's easier for men of color to bareback, to have unprotected sex with other men, to infect them, out of resentment and anger towards lack of father figures. Males who don't have men to love will have trouble learning how to love, and not harm, other men. When you're talking to men, ask them about their relationships to their father (figures). How he's learned to be loved by men, will inform how he loves men. If you don't have healthy father figures or none at all, you learn to fear men, especially well rounded men because there's an unknowable quality/training they've gotten from men. They might seem harder or tougher or less open to your emotional needs because of some of the boundaries they've learned from their fathers. It answers why homosexual men have both an attraction to and resentment/fear of heterosexual men.
Lack of Resources (Poverty)
There was a rule in my house growing up. Everyone worked. Me, my mother, my father, my stepfathers, even when a cousin stayed with us for a year. Everyone worked. My parents made enough money to give me the trinkets I wanted without big stress (comics, action figures, movies, toys, candy money) but they engineered a system for me to learn the prime rule of life.
You have to work for what you want.
At 7, I wanted some more action figures, more comics, just more, dammit! My parents sat me down and first we worked out a chore list but eventually there was only so much I could do so they were like let's create something you can do to earn the money you want for this other stuff. My mother wrote up a contract and they loaned me $5 to start a Sunday newspaper delivery business. Buy for 50 cents, sell for 75, keep the shopping cart in front of you when they open their doors. In a week I'd made and paid back my investors plus moved on to hiring the babysitter's children to franchise out to other buildings.At 17, during summer vacation from high school I was jobless and my mother told me that she had the perfect job for me. The plan was simple: get up at 7am, she'd made me breakfast, be dressed to impress and have my resume and copies on me. I did. I was scared (my mother can cook but doesn't so this solicitousness was frightening). We stepped outside, she locked the door, took my keys and told me to start on the left hand side of Flatbush Avenue at 8am. Walk up it and at every store stop and ask for work. She handed me $5 and said at 1pm stop and get some lunch. Then cross the street and work my way back doing the same thing. I had 3 jobs by the end of that day. My father thought this was a great plan.
My father fully supported this. In fact my father had things about boys (even as young as 10) sleeping too long into the day whether or not it was a weekend. What are you doing was always his challenge. FInd something to do. Do you need me to find you something to do? At times it was a blessing to be able to wander outdoors away from him but it taught me how to explore the world; how to go find something to do.
Men teach boys that it's safe and expected for them to go explore the world, to take risks and to support themselves. Boys without fathers are left to their own devices about what to do with their time and energy. And boys have a lot of energy. Fathers teach you how to focus that energy.
My father explained to me at the age of 7 that while as my parents they were responsible for the big things (food, roof, school/clothes)---boys who were becoming men didn't take money from women. Real men didn't. Women, unfortunately because of disparities in society, can't always earn the same as men or more than enough to support herself and children. Women left by men overwhelmingly end up in poverty because they haven't had the time to develop and nurture education.careers while also being full time parents. HEnce why Welfare rolls are inundated with women and children and now, a generation later, men who haven't been socialized by healthy men in how to survive and generate resources.
I often ride the train or wander around neighborhoods throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens and I see Black and Latino men from 15 to 50 just hanging on corners---all times of the day. The odd thing about focusing so much of my career and education towards teaching and school is that I'm no longer on a strict 9 to 5 schedule so I see more of the world versus when I was in corporate America for 10 to 12 hours a day. I see an overwhelming amount of males going nowhere at the speed of light. Outside on block now are Latino men who are effectively dead to their futures. I've had to learn that I can't save everyone, that I have to focus my energy and skills in the areas that I can help individuals or groups at. Lack of fathers has left them without guides how to transition from boys to men, so they're stuck. They're males but they'll probably never be men. They'll never work nor educate beyond boy-level but they will procreate and having no father to teach them how to be fathers, they'll abandon their children. People never consider that abandoning fathers breed males who learn how to abandon. Where do you think abandoners learn to abandon?
Remedies:
How do we change this? How do we encourage and develop men of color to be active involved parents to one or a dozen children? More importantly, why should we consider this an emergency? Black and Latino males will become the permanent underclass. Sure there will always be a small percentage of men of color, regardless of their sexuality and family origin who survive, thrive and find male mentors who teach them the manhood transitioning skills that their single mothers can't. But let's conservatively flip that 70% boys of color in mother headed households to 70% of Black and Latino men won't progress to manhood.
1. No viable mates for women and/or other men. Can't find a Good Man? It might have to do with the fact that two thirds are trying to find and mate with the good one third.
2. Men make money. But if there is no economic power (which translates to political/social power) within communities of color to launch into power positions around the district, counties, towns, cities, states and eventually the nation. Imagine a country where right now people of color are over 30% of the population but by 2050 being reversed and being over 60% of the population. But the financial, political and educational capital rest with the minority 30% to 40% who are still Caucasian because that other 60%? 70% of their males are useless in the capitalistic system. Where do you think the next Barack Obama's will come from if there are no father's to raise a new generation? Our hopes and futures can't be lottery ticket built on hoping for the 1 in a million. When people talk to you about 1 in a million people. Remind them there are 999,999 who it didn't work out for----it reduces the cheering from just one in a million.
3. Men move families and communities along to higher education because fathers have money, time and resources (motivational, mental and spiritual) to move their families to the next level. If you don't have men who are responsible back to their communities and children then they aren't advancing the communities nor the individuals. Hence the cycle will beget itself again.
Remedies include:
1. Getting men of color off of Welfare and HASA. Teaching men that they have value and training them in skills to improve themselves starts a stop gap. Welfare, HASA and Social Security Disability have to be safety nets,not norms for men of color. If you don't buy the self esteem argument then consider this---anytime someone gives you support they can change it. I once challenged a group of men/women who were on Welfare with the question of what would they do if the very next month Welfare lowered the money/Food Stamps they gave them by $5. Would they walk away in protest? No. They all agreed they'd be upset but adjust. I then asked them what if the following month it was lowered by $20. And then another $5 the third month? We played the game until we got to if your benefits were cut in half, then you'd rise in some form of protest but what if the Welfare office just shrugged back at you and said you can take half or go away. with none, what would you do? Only slaves and whores keep knuckling under to such financial undercutting, men/manhood says oh, hell no and pushes back healthily, assertively but if you haven't been taught how to have healthy assertive power, you can't stop being made into a slave.
Welfare/HASA is not helping anyone, in fact it's destroying them. Destroying someone's natural capabilities to work and progress means that they develop the habits of complacency and helplessness. Not of power, not of empowerment. Manhood though is built on one's sense of power and integrity and value. If you don't have those as a constant in your identity and goal, what are you? Safety nets should assist, help and develop not incubate weakness.2. Getting skills and education. You're on the Internet---you should know how to use all Microsoft Office programs because the lessons are free on YouTube. In fact the equivalent of a doctoral education is available on the internet. Find a college, get some syllabi and between the library and internet fill in the holes in your education.
3. Give back to boys. As uncomfortable as it may make you, because you didn't have the experience go volunteer with some boys or teens. If you can't play basketball you can still referee If you can't walk, you can still teach a boy how to read, how to find a job, how to tie a tie. In order to save your people, you must as much as possible take the place of absent fathers. Teach a boy how to use a checking account, how you use a credit card, how to fill out a job application, how to drive a car. You have valuable skills and most importantly that mentorship will teach you how to patiently parent boys, how to care for them, how to nurture and enhance them and that will help to heal your own loss and wounds.
Enjoy!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
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Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday 11:30pm simulcast
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