Morality and Practicality

Morality could be described as what we ought to do; practicality as what we can do. When what we ought to do and what we can do are the same or at least in sync, we have no problems and we do good work. But what happens when when we can’t do what we ought to do? What if we can not satisfy the good, but only, perhaps, satisfice it?

This is the argument that separates the Democratic candidates for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sec. Hillary Clinton, on the subject of healthcare. Sen. Sanders is preaching a gospel of medicare for all, a single payer system that leaves no American behind and eschews the private insurance market for, at the very least, all basic healthcare needs.

On the other hand, Sec. Clinton has said emphatically,

“People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.”

So Sec. Clinton says that Sen. Sanders’ call for medicare for all is a better idea, but that it can never happen. It is the moral thing to do, but not the practical thing to do, the ACA is the practical thing to do and she believes that to be the case for all time.

Now it would be silly to call people to do something, even though is better than what we do now, that will “never, ever come to pass,” but it would not be silly to call people to do something better that not only can be done, but is being done right now, across the globe; an example of which is just a little ways north of here in a place folks like to call Canada.

(And to clarify, Sen. Sanders has not called for people with or without emergencies to wait for healthcare while he and anyone including Sec. Clinton have a “theoretical debate about some better idea.” Sen. Sander has not said to scrap the ACA, but evolve it over time into Medicare for All).

Is it impractical to do something, a better thing, that other people are already doing and have been doing for decades? Is it immoral to do something, a better thing, that other people are already doing and have been doing for decades? If a thing is neither impractical nor Immoral to do, isn’t saying that it is immoral and impractical the real immoral thing to do?

‪#‎ItsYallTurnNow‬

My life is not your teaching moment.
My tears are not yours to drink.
My pain is not here to grow your empathy.
My words are not your thoughts to think

White folks, it’s your turn now
To take up your cross and walk
To do your work of justice
To stand up in your world and talk

I will not leave you forsaken
I will still include you in my prayers
but I will not do your work for you
I will not ease your cares

It’s your turn now to bear the fear
Of facing the demon called Race
It’s your turn now to stand and fight
And set your own healing pace

We can stand beside each other
And build the Kingdom grand
But we cannot be actor and spectator
And expect to save this land.

So take your stand and do your work
Stare down your fear, don’t blink
My life is not your teaching moment.
My tears are not yours to drink.

A Damn Rant

The President just called out the GOP for refusing to pass “a darn bill.”

The last time the President said “damn,” conservatives lost their tiny minds and the Drudge Report ran a headline “President Goes Street.”

To which I say “So?”

Barack Obama is a grown ass man. And him saying “darn” like a six year old makes him sound like, well, a six year old. It is an attempt to “boy-ify” Obama and he’s going along with it so he won’t be seen as an angry black man.

But he is an angry black man. I am an angry black woman. And the people who voted for him, TWICE I may add, are all angry in every color in the rainbow of humanity.

Mr. President, we have much to be angry about. BE ANGRY! And if it upsets bigots, bullies and buffoons, GOOD!

if Clark Gable could say damn in 1939, then the POTUS can say damn in 2014. And he can say it any damn time he wants.

He grown and if anyone has a problem with him being grown, they can write their complaints on a piece of paper, fold it five ways, and stick it where the DAMN SUN DONT SHINE!

The “extra 200 points on the SAT” argument

When I was in High School, I heard a myth that all black students got an extra 200 points just for being black. White student would then lament about how they wished they were black and they could get those special extras that only the blacks get.

Now to my knowledge, and that of Princeton, there are not extra points for being black and there never were. But let’s say there were. The problem for the white students is that they dont get to be black for just the day or the few hours they have to take a test

Black is a lifetime commitment

You have to be black when you try to hail a cab
You have to be black when visiting NYC and stop and frisk is in effect
You have to be black in all job interviews, loan applications, and high school guidance sessions
You have to be black when you explain to your child why little Johnny called her that name
You have to be black in all those statistics that say your life expectancy is shorter than other demographics, that you more likely to be arrested and convicted, that you are more prone to chronic illness.

Still want the 200 points on a test?

It Ain’t about the Plums

Allow me to tell you a story

When I was small, I spent a great deal of time with my Gramma at her home in SE NC. It wasn’t a bad way to spend the summer. I was surrounded by family and the neighborhood was brimming over with kids my age. We’d run and play and work (or what children call work) all day. There was always something to do and if not, we could always think of something. It was the “we could always think of something.” that this story is about.

Down the road from my Gramma’s house was her cousin Florence’s home and in Cousin Florence’s backyard was a plum tree, quite possibly the biggest plum tree ever to grow on the Earth. It grew those big black plums. You know the kind, big as an apple and sweeter that sugar cane and when you bit into one, the juice would run down your face in tiny torrents and no matter how hot the day, the flesh of the plums was always cool.

Whenever we would visit Cousin Florence, we would ask if we could pick a plum from her tree. She would say, “Oh, I wish you would. They are breaking down my tree. Don’t take just one, take two or three.”

She’d say to you, she’d say this to me

And she’d say it every time, to friend and stranger alike.

So what transpired one week in my eighth summer is worthy of note.

One day in mid summer, we, the kids in the neighborhood, had finished our chores and we were thinking of something to do. We came upon a plan.

It was brilliant plan, one of stealth and daring do. It would involve all of us and require precision, coordination, and cunning. Timing was of the utmost importance and  communication was essential.

What was this plan, this mission impossible you ask?

We were going to steal Cousin Florence’s plums.

Our plan, and it was beautiful, was that the girls would stage various distractions along the highway and in people’s front yards while the boys would sneak through the woods behind the houses until they were behind Cousin Florence’s house. While distracting her and her husband on their front porch, the boys would stealthily come upon the tree and steal the low hanging fruit.

We thought our plan flawless and we executed it with the skill of a James Bond (minus the whole getting caught part). We met in my backyard upon completion of the mission and shared the spoils of our labor. It all went so perfectly and the thrill was so intense that naturally, we decided to do it again the next day.

Out next expedition did not go so well.  It seemed our odd behavior the day before had raised suspicions and the adults of our community were on alert that something was up.

We were caught

Our bounty was confiscated

And belts and switches were waiting for us in our respective homes.

My grandmother, with each swing of the switch, asked in staccato fashion, “Why… did… you… steal… those… plums?”

All I could get out between yowls of pain was, “I don’t know!”

And the truth was, I didn’t know. See, the theft of the plums wasn’t about the plums. Every child involved knew all he or she had to do was ask and they could have all the plums they wanted. Ever child involved had bowls and bags of those same plums in their refrigerators.

The theft wasn’t about the plums, it was about the PLAN. It was the planning, the pretending, the creeping that was the attraction, was the fun.

Not about the plums, but about the plan.

What is going on in Raleigh, and in state house across Red-state America, ain’t about the plums, but about the plan and if you don’t get that, then you are missing the point.

• If you think the problem is Republicans making govt so small it can fit in woman’s vagina, then you have missed the point
• If you think the problem is making voting so complicated as to disenfranchise as many non-GOP voting bases as possible, then you missed the point
• If you think the idea is to purge the nation of Spanish speaking dark skinned people people, then you have missed the point
• If you think the idea is to privatize public education, then you have missed the point
• If you think the problem is any ONE thing, then you have missed the point

It ain’t about the plums, it’s about the plan.

And what is the plan?

1953.

Not the 1953 that was, but the one on the TV. Pre-Roe v. Wade, pre-Brown v. Board, pre Griswald, pre color. A place where everything and everyone stayed in his, her, its place; a place determined not but work or merit but a script writer selling eyeballs to advertisers using formulaic story telling transmitted through a picture tube.

They want to bring back a time that never was in order to further an agenda that never worked and to enrich people who never deserved it.

You can’t just protect one plum, you have to watch the whole tree, guard the whole tree, protect the whole tree.

You can’t be distracted.

It ain’t about the plums, it’s about the plan.

A very ugly word.

The word nigger is a very ugly word.

This poem sums just how ugly

Incident
By Countee Cullen

(For Eric Walrond)

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Not saying not to use it. Not my place to say.

And I know I shouldn’t give power to the word. I have heard all the arguments from co-opting it to using it until it is rendered useless.

In the end, none of those arguments work because the need for those arguments betrays them. Why would I want to co-opt the word nigger? Why should I need to render it useless? What good has or does the word done or do? What are it’s redeeming qualities? What beauty does it hold that makes it too precious to let go? Perhaps there is a tragic truth that only it can express and to lose it would be to break from reality?

Not saying not to use it. Not my place to say.

But perhaps a more judicious use of it? It is a word with a history, a word that to this day holds the power to order murder. And the Queen’s English is a poor enough vehicle for communication, we can ill afford to lose more words, lose more meaning. Nor should we hide our precious egos from the ugliness of history, the wretchedness of truth, the nakedness of shadow.

Not saying not to use it. Not my place to say.

I will say this, it doesn’t make you cool, doesn’t make you down with the cause. Black folk who use it as a ball in a game of keep away, you do the world no favors. White folk who use it to show how you have embrace your inner “wigger,” you do the world no favors. It seems as had been the case for most of its history, the honesty in that word comes served with venom, bile, and malevolent revulsion. It always comes from a place of self hate, no matter the color of spewer. And its purpose is always cruel, even when said with a smile and hug and proceeded by “my.”

Not saying not to use it. Not my place to say.

Poets and prosists have used the word to great effect exploring its violence and exposing its parasitic nature. Its tragic truth, its seductive misery, its damning invective against speaker and listener. And yet…

And yet we cannot let it go. It is the bastardization of our exceptionalism, it is the hate that gives us meaning, our cross to bear and on whose timbers we sacrifice whatever gods we see, whatever souls we be and loathe in the truth of our imperfection.

Not saying not to use it. Not my place to say.

What Girls Don’t Want

I watched the new HBO show Girls.

I was not impressed.

The direction was good, cinematography was good, the performances were OK, I guess.

I didn’t like it.

I don’t like shows that depict self-indulgent behavior as acceptable. I don’t like shows about whiny women (particularly young whiny white women with college degrees and influential parents living in a city where thousands of children haven’t time to worry about dumb shit because they are on constantly the verge of homelessness, hunger, incarceration and deprivation), I don’t like shows too obsessed with themselves to take the time necessary to understand themselves.

I like this article tho.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/155207/tv%27s_overwhelming_whiteness_changes_how_we_think_/?page=entire

But the show doesn’t just get race wrong, it gets class wrong, and from the episode I saw, it is even getting women wrong.

First the race thing.

YOU DON’T GET TO USE BROOKLYN AS YOUR BACK DROP AND HAVE NO BLACK PEOPLE IN IT!!!
Do you have to have black friends? No.
Black love interest? No.
Black landlord or whacky neighbor next door? No.

But really, no black people in restaurants, stores, elevators, ON THE SIDEWALK???
Strike that, one black man is on the sidewalk and he compliments the main character. He’s homeless and most likely insane but he allowed to use the sidewalk and flatter white woman.

Oh happy day.

The Asian woman (“the” as in the singular) is hired because she knows software? Really? This is as original as you can get?

Computer person, Asian
Homeless person, black.
This member of the viewing public, not surprised

Now class.

We travel, we attend university and finish, we lose parental support and then go to grandmother, we get to be eternal unpaid interns and NOT get the lights cut off or our possessions put out on the curb. And when we have problems (such as they are), we get to whine. We get to have mothers who actually make sense but are obviously evil and cruel, so we, the whiny and willfully weak, get all the sympathy even though we are wrong. And no doubt their therapists bills will get paid as will their medication bills and any other bills that may come up.

And finally, womanhood.

Why is the star having bad sex? Why are grown women sounding like twelve year olds? Why is a show about grown assed women called GIRLS?

All these things could be forgiven, hell even celebrated if not for the fact that the show doesn’t own what it is doing. It, like its main character, is denial about what it is. She is a young woman with ambition, talent, and a history of some damn lucky breaks and NONE of that has she decided to used to her own advantage. The show could be cutting edge and deep and timely …

we’ll see if it ever is

A final word on THE HELP

Well now that all the awards have been handed out and all the hosannas articulated, let’s talk about The Help.

Obligatory Disclaimers:
Octavia Spencer and Olivia Davis are great actors who held their own and rose above and beyond the call to deliver excellent performances.
Employment in the service of others is no crime, no sin, and should not be looked upon with derision or loathing. Domestic labor is honest, honorable work that is often under appreciated by employers and society and is nothing about which to be ashamed.

In addition:
Two often overlooked performance in this movie, those of Sissy Spacek and Cicely Tyson. Those two women have more acting chops in their pinky fingers than 98% of the actors working today have in their whole bodies.

Now, for The Help

First a glossary of terms.
Magic Negro: The Magical Negro, or magical African-American friend, is a supporting stock character in American cinema, who, by use of special insight or powers, helps the white protagonist. … The Magical Negro is typically but not always “in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint,” often a janitor or prisoner.[5] He has no past; he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.[6][7] He usually has some sort of magical power, “rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters.”[6] He is patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and is “closer to the earth.”[2]The Magical Negro serves as a plot device to help the protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them.[2] Although he has magical powers, his “magic is ostensibly directed toward helping and enlightening a white male character.”[5] “These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.”[8] It is this feature of the Magical Negro that some people find most troubling. Although from a certain perspective the character may seem to be showing blacks in a positive light, he is still ultimately subordinate to whites. He is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to “like individual black people but not black culture.”[8][9]

Mammy: The mammy archetype is perhaps one of the best-known archetypes of African American women. She is often portrayed within a narrative framework or other imagery as a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, very dark skinned, middle aged, and loud. The mammy was usually depicted in a negative manner and portrayed as lacking all of the sensual and sexual qualities that an attractive woman would have. This de-eroticism of the mammy would in turn imply that the white wife, and by extension the white family, was safe.[1] … Historically, the media have portrayed the mammy in a stereotypical fashion, often being submissive towards her owners (during slavery) and to her employers (after emancipation.) She also displays aggressiveness towards other members of the African American community, particularly to males.[3] … When other contemporary mammies emerged, they usually retained their occupation as a domestic and exhibited these physical feature changes; however, their emotional qualities remained intact. These contemporary mammies continued to be quick witted and remained highly opinionated.

Thank you Wikipedia

If The Help were made in a year with, say, 17 other major Hollywood movies starring black actors, would it be problematic? This query is a question I wish the reader to keep in mind as this article proceeds.

The Help is about a young white woman, freshly graduated from Ole Miss, coming home to start her career as a writer. She has an idea to write the true story of maids in Jackson, Mississippi. She then enlists the help of Aibbie and later Minnie in her endeavor and through their quirky yet poignant tales of domestic life, she publishes her book, which becomes a best seller; socks it to the queen bee mean girl of her social circle; and gives her mother the will to fight cancer. All these things happen while she discovers in herself the strength and courage to be a success in on her own terms.

It’s chick flick, a feel-good movie, a comedy for the most part with just enough gloom to give it some gravitas. It’s not Citizen Kane nor is it All About Eve nor was it meant to be. However, it has been forced to bear a weight too heavy for so light a movie.

(This you first cue to think about that question I asked at the beginning.)

Even giving the movie justly deserves props for the acting, the cinematography, the plotting, the editing, etc., still an unease persist when watching this story about black maids and white employers set in the south in 1963. The characters are a little too … too. The maids are a little too good, Miss Hilly is a little too mean, Skeeter longs a little too much for Constantine, Elizabeth is a little too distant from her daughter, Constantine is a little too noble, and the men in the film are too distant from the story. The only thing that isn’t a little too … too is depth. Could have been a little deeper, even for light summer comedy.

Jessayin’.

Aibbie and Minnie are too docile. This is particularly troubling in the character of Minnie. In one scene, she is saying how she is going to kill have to Miss Hilly. In another scene, she is telling Skeeter how she had better tell her story and tell it right. The toilet-flushing scene springs to mind and of course the infamous pie scene. However, in other scenes in the movies, Minnie is admonishing her daughter to show extreme deference when in white folks’ kitchens. In another, she is abused by her husband. In the majority of screen time in Miz Celia’s employ, she is deathly afraid of being caught cooking by her employer’s husband. In a scene between these two women, the ridiculous attempts to be sublime when Celia (a woman too scared to tell her husband that she hired a maid), while tending bruising on Minnie face administered Minnie’s husband Leroy, tells Minnie that Minnie should “hit him over the head with a skillet and tell him to go straight to hell.”

Huh?

If the purpose of this scene is to show the strength of Celia, it rings hollow in light of the fact that in addition hiding Minnie, she also hides miscarriages and runs after acceptance from the Jackson Junior League like a wolf runs after a pork chop.

Aibbie, until her confrontation scene, continually puts herself in the role of suffering saint. She soothes Mae Mobley’s crying, she accepts Elizabeth’s admonitions and advises her fashion choices, and she endures Hilly’s cruelty. Her only act of defiance is telling her story to Skeeter and even then, one feels this act to more of a service to Miss Skeeter than an act of revolution.

Important to add, the courage to confront Hilly only comes after Aibbie is threatened with losing the privilege of raising Mae Mobley. Her son was killed and she did not confront his employer but take away the little white child and she becomes an Amazon.

Hilly is probably the most honest character, with regard to the actual way that many employers to this day think, or in some cases don’t think, about their employees. She is also the personification of one of the most often cited problems with the film. She considers “the help” to be background actors in the movie of her life, props to be used to further her story, and plot vehicles with which to drive home her point of view. When soulless things are no longer of use or will not work in the way intended, you discard and/or destroy them. This is what Miz Hilly Holbrook does; she categorizes and discards the refuse.

Let us not forget our hero, Miz Skeeter. She is the cool one, the one with whom we the audience should identify and applaud. Unlike her friends in the Junior League, Skeeter goes to college and graduates and wants a career and stands up to men and pursues noble goals like truth, and loves on her terms, and exposing hypocrisy. We cheer for her when she dresses down her date, hope for her when she applies for her job at the paper, cry for her when she learns the truth about Constantine. She is egalitarian, often preferring to spend her time with “the help,” to emote with “the help,” to expose the truth of “the help.” By walking the road savior-saint who sacrifices her position in order to lift up the down trodden, she is transformed from child crusader to fully actualized hero and is set to begin her life’s quest and slay all dragons that lie in her way.

She makes me feel all tingly just thinking about her.

I have to interject here. When this movie came out, more than one of my pigmently-challenged friends asked me to see this movie with them. I declined, at first for legitimate reason as it came out at a hectic time in my life but later out of fear of just what this movie was about and how it would handle its subject matter. Funny thing is, the more reasons (and then excuses) I gave, the more insistent my friends became that I see the film and that I see it with them. Somehow my presence was necessary in order them to really see the movie. I would love Miz Skeeter and I would admire the maids just as they did and by doing so, I would validate the film and their love of the story somehow.

I would watch the film weeks after its debut and with my nephew.

I should also say here that my grandmother was a live-in maid and cook and that my mother did days work most of her working life. Their stories of the families for they worked were funny, outrageous, and infuriating. In the case of my mother, sometimes they were peppered with her quitting before she would take a stick to the lady of the house. They, nor any of the other women in our family circle, were long-suffering Aibbie or multiple-personalities Minnie.

As soon as the movie came out, the critics jumped. Melissa Harris-Perry did not wait to get out of the theater and tweeted a scathing review during her actual viewing. Entire websites popped up dedicated to the deconstruction of The Help, the taking to task of the many tones of Mammy highlighted in the film, and how the maids, by letting their stories change Skeeter, let loose their “magic negro.”

Were the criticisms valid?

For the most part yes. However I must say that some did seem a little over the top, just a little. The problem with Mammy, no matter how noble she may be, is that she has been and can be an overpowering archetype of a perverted perfection to be expected by the majority to come from the minority. A definition of other that disempowers black women by demanding that the black woman willingly, sacrificially funnel her power into the white woman. The act is seen as a holy thing that makes the white woman whole and the black woman a saint, when in reality such a practice can only make the black woman a victim and the white woman a parasite.

This is not a happy thing. This narrative is a thing that black women have to fight every day, and when this unhappy thing is dressed up pretty and sold at $12 a view as a happy thing, black women tend to go a teeny, tiny bit nuclear. And as with any explosion, you can hurt some of the very people you are trying to help. Women of color who work, or have worked, in the domestic trades can be made to feel less than, can be made to feel unappreciated, can be made to feel like they are not whole. This thing is not just a hurtful thing; this thing is a sin. Too many women did suffer all the indignities and dangers that Melissa Harris-Perry has outlined in her interviews on the subject, and they did so knowing the score. They should never ashamed of their sacrifice and we should never allow ourselves to be ashamed of them. Without them, there is no us.

And that I think is the defining problem with any movie that bases character and plot on the stereotypical and plays to the pat answers and predictable questions of an unexamined life. Cardboard characters and hackneyed narrative that evoke all the right emotions pavlovian style. It’s junk food for soul. We feel full but are malnourished. We never are questioned or uneasy or in any way uncomfortable or disquieted by this movie. Throughout it, we feel safe, righteous, comfortable and far too familiar. We laugh when we are supposed to laugh, we cry when we are supposed to cry and feel triumphant as Addie walks away at the end with her head high, unemployed, ineligible for social security, and without prospects.

There’s a happily ever after for ya.