The Answers to Unasked Questions

The Want + Example + Reason = Imperative.

The Question + Example + Reason = Understanding.

Read More

When A Song Reminds of Of A Ruckus Memory

Accidents happen because of circumstance or carelessness. And then there is that dang song. Awesomely Luvie and company put a hurting of truth and humor on what should have been left the song writing notebook. Scribbles, yes. Song, no.

I didn't want to pay attention to the verbiage about the Accidental Racist song. The resurrection of the symbols of genocide as badges of honor do not interest me. I'm getting worn out about stepping up to the soap box to once again remind people that slavery was not a life style choice or a hangover of regret for a bad weekend.

You can't put it behind you if you can't recognise some of y'all are doing the same shit that your ancestors use to do. Like voter suppression. Like controlling women fertility and what she wants or needs to do with her choices and options in life.

There is blood on that Rebel flag. Which isn't even the correct version of the Confederate flag. If you are going to bring up history get it straight.

I know people do not want to talk about slavery in terms of genocide but if you take people involuntarily from their home country, pack them into ships and then force them into labor, sexual abuse and cultural indoctrination then you got to figure on some people being killed because they did not want to go or they did not want to be in bondage.

Most people don't. 

Anyway, I didn't want to talk about the song as much as bring up fragments of an Uncle Ruckus memory.

Uncle Ruckus does not like black folks. Even though he is one himself.  I have met a Ruckus or two and it rings true to my experience.

The speech is wiped clean of any inflection or intonation that could remotely be associated with the African American experience. This does NOT make a person an Uncle Ruckus. No, no and no!

(I'm a little sensitive on this point for reasons I choose not to go into at this time.) But it could be a teeny-tiny clue if other elements are in place.

We are talking about a person who makes such an effort to speak in an un-accented neutral English that he make Tom Brokaw sound like he's dropping slang.

Uncle Ruckus can be immaculate in his attire. No hair on his head that would be allowed to be in any form of a curl or a kink. Whoops, forgot about those that are aiming to emulate Dean Martin's hair from the 70s.

It can go either way.

Uncle Ruckus finds safety in dressing as someone from 1965 and it isn't because he is a hipster. Dude lives in culturally neutral clothing.

Uncle Ruckus does not associate or allows himself to be seen with other black folks. Socially, he can be forced into it but he don't like it and will bolt on over to the other side of the room if white folks are present.

He will tell you he is not African American. He is American. Not of African decent.

Seriously, I've had this conversation with the Ruckuses. My understanding is that they feel it is a self imposed limitation they do not want to be associated with; an association that can cause them to be distant from their families of origin even if they are living in the same house.

Politically, Ruckuses can be Republican. However, not all black Republicans are Ruckuses. And  Uncle Ruckus wouldn't associate with black Republicans anyway. Even hanging with Black Tea Party folks would make him uncomfortable.

It is just that extreme.

He is not a white man trapped in a black body. He is a black man who is doing all he can to be white and racist against African Americans.

It is a puzzlement but there you go. So when you co-sign to sing lyrics on a song like:

I’m just a white man
(If you don’t judge my do-rag)
Comin’ to you from the southland
(I won’t judge your red flag)
Tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be
I’m proud of where I’m from
(If you don’t judge my gold chains)
But not everything we’ve done
(I’ll forget the iron chains)
It ain’t like you and me can re-write history
(Can’t re-write history baby)

You gotta take a pause. You have to ask yourself why would somebody sing those lyrics? Why would you put your gold chains higher than the suffering of the ancestors?

I'm just remembering people from long ago and yet not so far away.

Accidents can happen. By circumstance or they are caused by carelessness.

Read More

We Can't Be Invisibile Because We Are Here

They say that older women are ignored in America.That the societies focus is on the new and the long legged ample person who might be eighteen years old dripping wet. I still get that look from younger people in fear of I might talk to them.

At length.

Please. If I decided to talk to you it is either because I want to or have no choice in the matter. I was in the store the other day. I wanted to buy a microphone. The young person took me to the computer microphone section.

This is valid. I understand. This is a generation of Skype and social gaming.

I had to explain I needed the non-computer stand alone 3.5 mm or USB microphone.

In the explanation process I could see behind her eyeballs telling me to go away, I was messing with her flow. Then it clicked for her, "Oh, wait, yes we do have the other microphones."

The store was sold out.

It wasn't always this way. There wasn't necessarily this hostility in cross generational exchanges. If we are serious about telling our stories then we need to know the other.




This is Jude Narita. Long time theater actress and passionate about her craft. This is a moment from the Screen Adjustments panel at the Beyond The Bad and the Ugly summit that in March 2013.

Not every is new and there are people that know the path.

There are new ways of doing thing and not every old person is wise. This is why we have to share what we know so that we are clear on who we are and what we believe.

That cannot happen in isolation.

Read More

Walking Away From the Shadows

This is about changing a portion of my life. I do not want to be one of those people that complains that their lives have no meaning or that the circumstances of my life cannot be changed. I do not want to be that person but at times I have been that dark cloud.

I'm trying new things and approaches. I'm scared. I haven't done some of this stuff before.

I shouldn't be so vague. 

I have a day job. It is okay for a day job.

But it isn't what I want to do for the next couple of years. Well,  I could but my spirit is calling me to pay attention to what it wants. I have ignored that spirit for too long.

I can't do that. Nothing wrong with it if that is your choice. I just can't.

With libraries closing my time spent learning to be a library technician/paraprofessional has not exactly borne employment fruit.

Now I do I feel I have gotten a great return on my investment, no complaints. I have foundation skills on how to find information and a whole bunch of information resources. I have connections with really cool people.

Everything that I learned in my classes has helped me be a better writer. Not a grammarian, just the writing part.

I just can't get a library job that will financially support me because we in this nation have hostility towards education and librarianship. No one wants to pay for it or anything else to support the benefit of their communities.

Dumb ass clucks.

Yet, if I tried to save enough for a librarian degree I would still in an employment quandary after graduation.

I was faced with looking for another career option. Again.

So, what am I gonna do? 

That is a good question.

For a while I just numbed out and focused on the day job; the day job that I had intended on leaving. I had to find a way to make peace with that and it took a lot of time. Making peace with my anger that the world did not turn the way that I expected.

It never does. Stupid world.

I needed to look at what I do naturally and what I like to do. I  see a rise in the entrepreneurial educators or resource bloggers/educators. I am noticing that there are huge chasms of information/education that are not being service, documented or even discussed outside of academia and I not sure even there because they don't seem to have focused on changes in their marketplace.

What I am seeing doesn't have a proper name yet. Or I don't know it. 

I see opportunities in the shadows. This is a very good thing. Being able to see opportunities instead of the shadows. The suckers co-exist with each other and it takes a shift in perspective to move from one to another.

So for this year or however long it takes I'm going to be taking real world and on-line classes exploring how to create instructional and educational media. I will be traveling to places I've never been. I'm laying cash money on the line as a down payment on my commitment to go foward.

I am being open to the possibility that once I try this path I might find that is not what I though it to be. It might not be a good fit. That is okay. So long as I am in motion. So long as I am willing to try.

Once more into the breach.

Read More

Break the Freaking Mold - Colorlines Video

As some of you know, I am an advocate for alternative and creative video content. I do not care if you want to monetize or not, show me something other than an insulting dumb azz scripted corporate reality shows.

Women need to be visible. Non-hostile white men need to be visible. Fat people that like to dance need to be visible.

Which is why I will not watch. mainstream TV. My television has been dark for five years and counting. Only in the case of a national calamity will I turn it on again.

I subscribe to educational channels, old people channels, teenagers, food shows, tech shows, and what ever I might be interested in that day. Don't box me in and don't try to peg me demographically.

I'm just as likely to was 60 Seconds Adventures in Astronomy as I am to relax watching the Galaxy Trio.

I'm not alone in this mind set. Okay, perhaps watching the Galaxy Trio is for a select population.




Jay Smooth point out on Twitter this Colorlines video from some of the top folks on YouTube.They just so happen to be people of color.

Should you happen to hear some chuckle-head cackle that we are in a post-racial society and that they are color blind please point their eyeball to this video. Because these folks will tell them that they get deeply offensive comments no matter what they are talking about.

That they don't get the new tech give-a-ways to share with their viewers and they have a lot of viewers. Probably don't get the invites to plain vanilla stuff either. 

It is a lament that I have heard from African American parenting bloggers who get totally ignored by  the marketing world. Followed by food bloggers of color, tech bloggers and probably there is a version for the audio podcasters as well.

Asian, Latino/Latina and African Americans creators do not fit the current mold of completion acceptance. I have a feeling ageism creeps into the mix as well; in both directions.

So let's break the freaking mold.

Read More

The Places and Spaces In My Photos

I have been taking photos since I was thirteen. Sometimes it is a snap shot. I try to make quality prints. No, that isn't true. I try to be in the moment and take the photo. Very rarely is it print quality.

It tried to be great when I had my homemade darkroom.They still were snap shots but I gave it a go.

It was hard. The chemicals sometimes made it painful. That D-75 used to eat through my fingers something awful.

I didn't like tongs. 

After a few more prints I learned to use tongs.

There was a time when I gave up taking photos. Making prints. Taking snap shots. Looking at the world.

Part of it was the expense of it. It did cost money to do it on the cheap and that was the only way I could do it.

I was discouraged by a so-called teacher. Male. Worked very hard to get the undesirables out of his classroom. He was good at it.

Mostly it was the vision that I had didn't seem to mesh up with what the world was telling me was acceptable for women and black folk to do.

It beats you down after a while.

I wouldn't even pick up an Instamatic because I couldn't afford to have the film developed.  Yet I kept taking photos in my head.

I have to say that when the first glimmers of digital photography started to appear the stone around my heart started to crack. I laid eyes on that Kodak DS240 or something like it I knew I needed to get in on the action.

It took a while. A long while.

Stocked up on many a photo magazine in the meantime, getting ready.

Reclamation takes a while to kick in. I had to find out what this digital photo business was, did it involve darkrooms or enlargers?

No? Count me in.

I do actually like the darkroom process but no, I'm not going back.

So I take photos of people I've seen on TV. Or buildings. Or the chunk of hunk that is walking down the street. 

They no longer have to be perfect. Unless I want them to be. They are my memories of what I just saw as I move though this place called Southern California.

Read More

Text and Subtext or I'm Too Touchy

It is March 1, 2013.  I thought I'd be relieved that Black History Month was over because pound for pound it has been one of the most difficult BHM that I have experienced in a while.

It has been a month of people behaving badly. Grinding to the last nerve kinda bad. Not enough to wish for divine intervention. But close. And I have been hurt, angered, raged up and resigned to the stupid as normal. You can't hold on to each and every bit of idiocy roiling down the road.

There are time when you need to speak up and fight back. But when you do expect to hear something like "I am to blame for being too sensitive."

What ticked me off this week?

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover on a new wave of speculative housing boom. The cover seems to show that Latinos and African Americans are being excessively happy at the money grab regarding housing.

Bloomberg Businessweek Cover February 25 - March 3, 2013

 
There is that old (false) meme that it was the fault of the sub-prime buyers that caused the crash. Not the corporations that sold debt paper from firm to firm. Not the feeding frenzy that had radio and television commercials on every station begging people to buy a home, no money down. Not the Ponsi activities of Bernie Madoff and other corporate con artists.

Yes, I hear you #10,384 in the comments. "It was a Latino dude that drew the picture so how could it be racist?" 

Because the actual article has nothing to do with the cover. Because the images used are stereotypical exaggerations of people of color going ding dong crazy because they have cash. And you know how we get cash, right?

It is another reminder that neo-post racists society is alive, well and prospering. What was the brief that the artist got? What does he believe about the housing crisis or is this a bad attempt to tell up happy days are here again?

Or are we invoking Greed is Good for another run around the block?

Some days I can ignore the goofy.  Like when they painted that 16-year old white model in bronze make-up and called her an African Queen. That has happened before; the fashion would really has a hard time with people of color.

Read a bit of the Black Voices Huntington Post comments. The effort to devalue legitimate objections to the paint job could be heartbreaking if you let it. I wouldn't read more than 10 of them cuz it is crazy making stuff.

There are other days I have to think about how far we've come and how to be vigilant when a justice of the Supreme Court thinks that my right to vote is a racial entitlement. This is an excerpt from Justice Scalia:

The problem here, however, is suggested by the comment I made earlier, that the initial enactment of this legislation in a -- in a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear was -- in the Senate, there -- it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term.

Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same.

Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don't want to be accused of taking the quote out of content. There is an office SCOTUS Transcript of the Section 5 Pre-Clearance Obligation.

Sniff, as if voters suppression didn't happen in the last few elections.

You do have to have not only a thick skin but also a discerning eye for what is being presented. There is intent, there is malfeasance and there evil.

There are also people that make mistakes. Laps of judgement. Ignorance.

There are days when you can't tell the difference.

February 2013 was like that for me.

So yeah, I'm a bit prickly.

Read More