"Things don't need to last forever to be perfect..."

"People will tell you that nothing matters, the world's about to end anyway. but those people are looking at life the wrong way. Things don't need to last forever to be perfect..."

- Day Dream Nation

"You want to make God laugh? Make a plan"

"Everybody dies but not everyone Lives"

"Without struggle, there is no progress" 

-Frederick Douglass 

All of these quotes have come to mean so much to me over the 12 months. They have been difficult ones. I have gone through possibly every negative emotion possible. I have been torn down and ripped apart to what I thought was my core. I have been on every edge and at every state of fear, frustration and desperation. But, by the grace of God, with amazing friends, and an unbelievable determination of Will I have come through it all. I've come through it stronger, better, and more secure. Not in life, or in the future, but in myself and my ability to make it through heartache and despair. 

Happiness is something to strive for. Something I am striving to keep. In this moment I am happy. Happy to be alive, happy to be who I am, happy with where I am going in life. Happy with who I have in my life. And Happiness is something I will work to maintain. 

"There Will Be Days When Heaven Does Not Seem So Close..."

I am in love with The Strivers' Row. I just wanted to start off with that statement. Strivers' Row artists are (as described by their youtube channel): "a performance collective born from the collision of passion and page....For them, performance is infinitely more than just a form of entertainment, it is a vehicle for transformation." The Row contains some of my favorite slammers including Joshua Bennett, Alysia Harris, and Miles Hodges. The piece below is one entitled "Strive". I think of it as their anthem as it contains different lines from some of their more famous poems.  

This one means so much too me, as it is a push forward. No matter what is going on in your life, no matter how hard it gets, strive on. It's empowering, strengthening and exciting. With all that life has thrown at me in the past year, their anthem has become my anthem, "Things will fall apart, break, rapture, rip at the seems...Strive...may you learn to mend yourself...Strive...there will be days when Heaven doesn't seem so close...when the dust settles, when the smoke clears, only the power of Will shall remain, those who fight shall conquer...Strive" 

I hope this was as encouraging to you as it has been to me.

Who Would He Have Grown To Be? Now We Will Never Know

By now, you've heard about the murder of Trayvon Martin, unless of course you've just been living under a rock, or going through you're own incredible struggles like being homeless or living in a war torn country. But just in case you haven't heard , Anti-racist educator Tim Wise has the best explanation that I've seen yet on the internet here. He also has the best historical explanation, I feel, of the outrage in support of Martin's shooter, Zimmerman here.

There are all types of debates going on about whether or not Zimmerman had a right to shoot  Martin and all the factors that would determine an answer to that question. My biggest issue with the discourse, in the media and in everyday conversation, is that the conversation is centered around intent in the first place. Two particular discourses around intent really bother me: whether or not it was a raced-based issue and whether or not Zimmerman or Martin had the better character.

Now as to the first discourse: I am not going to argue about if this was a raced based issue. I think there is plenty of evidence out there, as pointed out by the two Wise articles, that it was based on race. I think that the 911 tape of Zimmerman calling Martin a "fucking coon" (although to be fair, the word coon is kind of hard to hear on the tape), is proof. I even think studies like this NBC experiment on how we react to different races committing a blatant crime, is evidence that even if Zimmerman didn't have conscious thoughts about going after Martin because he was black, it's in our subconscious to view black men as criminals (no matter what race we ourselves are, since there's claim that Zimmerman is Hispanic, which I won't even get into).

Now as for the second discourse: There initially was a lot of discussion attacking Zimmerman's character by calling him crazy and paranoid (because of the multiple upon multiple phone calls he made to the police on a regular basis and based upon his neighbors' reports of his behavior). Because of that discussion there has as of late been talk that Zimmerman was actually an amazing guy with a high regard for the law (despite his blatant disregard for the orders of the 911 dispatcher to stay in his vehicle) which is why he was a neighborhood WATCH (keyword WATCH) man in the first play. There is also talk that, actually Martin wasn't so innocent because he was suspended from school for marijuana possession (suspected), because of some twitter posts, and because of some facebook photos that show him being a "gangsta".

 All of this is meaningless to the indisputable fact that Zimmerman shoot Martin. Whether Zimmerman shot him because he was Black and whether or not Martin was a good person means absolutely nothing to that fact. The only argument that has any merit at all in the discussion is whether or not it was self-defense, but even considering that Zimmerman still shot Martin. And at the very least he should be brought up on manslaughter, even if he is plead out.

The race debate is relevant to greater society. If his intent was race based (and I believe it was) I think that it and the discourse surrounding this case is evidence that we are not a post-racial society and that American society as a whole has a problem with viewing black men as criminals, a problem that can have dire consequences.

But that debate and the debate over character especially, has no relevancy over whether or not Martin deserved to die. He didn't. He did nothing wrong besides walk in the "wrong neighborhood". He had no weapon (unless you consider skittles and ice tea weapons). And even if he attacked Zimmerman, Zimmerman was the one in pursuit to begin with. But I don't want to even get into the self-defense argument because regardless of that fact, an innocent boy still lost his life.

Innocent not because he had never done anything wrong in his life, innocent because he wasn't doing anything wrong at that moment. Innocent because he was not expecting to be gunned down in a "safe" neighborhood, coming back from the store. Innocent because his future was stolen from him in one of the worst ways. And now his character is trying to be stolen from him instead of justice given to him. And that has to be one of the worst crimes of all....

“You Can’t Just Plan A Moment When Things Get Back On Track, Just As You Can’t Plan The Moment You Lose Your Way In The First Place." -Sarah Dessen

So it's been over a month since the last time I posted, and for that I apologize, but life definitely got the better of me for a while there. My health took a turn for the worst, which made everything harder to deal with. It's been a struggle just trying to keep up with life in general, but more specifically school.

But here I am, after spending the first week of Spring Break on tour with Grinnell's Young, Gifted and Black Gospel Choir touring the south and being home getting things in order for the first couple of days of the second week, back on track, and hopefully writing here on the blog more on the regular. (That was probably a really long run on sentence, but sue me).

Also, there have been plenty of things that I wanted to write about but just didn't have the time, so be prepared for a flood of posts over the next couple of days.

"There's Nothing More Unnatural Than A Mother Having To Bury Her Child..."

I've always been a fan of strong slamming. Poetry forces us to pay attention to what they are saying, even if the meaning is different for each of us. This piece touched me so much because I am from this city, I have heard these stories, I have seen others walking this path trying to get an understanding of all the destruction around them. Youth killing is a raging epidemic in the City of Wind, and more than anything it effects the lives of the youth left behind to mourn and make sense of a truth of life that they should have even been exposed to so early on in their years: that death comes where and when it wants and no one is invincible or strong enough to stop it.
This piece reminds me of where I come from, makes me grateful for where I am now, and makes me look forward to the future, more determined never to take a step back. I was lucky, I made it out of where the youth drop like flies.

What is Love? Baby Don't Hurt Me....

"Human beings have been trying for centuries, and we still have failed to rationalize or understand love. It’s never served us to set our hearts and minds up for battle against each other. By always trying to intellectualize love instead of just feeling it, we have built all this hype and pressure around one of the sweetest human actions: saying what you’re doing anyway. You are loving. There’s no need to feed your fears."

On the Road Again...

Do you judge your year on how it began or how it ended? Or I guess for us college students out here, do you judge your semester on how it begins or end?

After a week of being sick, another week spent in the hospital, and another week spent at home recuperating, I am finally back on the road to back to school in Grinnell. And honestly, for the first time, I have no idea if I'm ready. Usually, at the start of every new semester, no matter how bad the previous semester had gone (and I swear there was always SOMETHING), I was always excited to return, and start anew. And usually for about the first month or so, it goes pretty decently. I'm not saying it's smooth sailing, but pretty decently. I honestly don't know what the hell happened this year. The first semester of my 3rd year was pure hell all the way through it-- academically, socially, mentally, physically-- it was just pure hell. But still I looked forward to the beginning of this one. I had a plan-- I would take the long winter break to regroup. I had a to-do list and everything.

But then all hell broke loose with my health and everything hit a pause. I've missed the first week of school, trying to recuperate from everything that happened, and it was honestly up in the air whether or not I would return for the semester. But every time I thought about spending 4 months at home with no plan-- of getting off track, off schedule, and off grind-- I completely freaked. Since high school, I have not stopped, I've just kept it moving, kept pursuing a dream of being something more--bigger--better--whatever. Taking a break, is not comprehensible to me.

So at the same time my body is saying enough, my mind is rebelling. This is not necessarily a new thing, but what is new is the forcefulness. What is new is the doubt that, although I want to just get back to my regular neck-breaking pace, I won't be able to physically do it.

I'm tired, I physically hurt, and I'm mentally drained. I have no idea if I'm making the right choice by returning so soon after I made my body so sick (and I am convinced that I did it to myself).

What is the price of ambition? Happiness? Health? How much is it worth to succeed? I question whether or not my drive to succeed or my fear of failure is driving me more. And I truly am skeptical about my ability to handle what Grinnell chooses to throw my way this semester.

 But I'm on the road there, so I guess I'll get my  answer soon...

Black and Woman...

My father is always talking about women, especially black women, not really knowing there position...

*sigh*

:ately, I've been reading a lot of articles and posts about what it means to be Black and Woman and the issues that surround that intersection. I guess I'm just trying to figure out others' take on my identity, wondering if my experience is mirrored by anyone else. Or more so, I guess I'm just trying to comprehend my identity, find some common ground, some foundation, some understanding of my own experience as it relates to the greater social group of those both under-appreciated and devalued racially and by gender.

If I Could Fall Into The Sky....

Sometimes we have heard a song so many times that we forget why we loved it in the first place. This happens to me so often. I discover a song that I think is a gem and I play it over and over, just allowing the lyrics to wash over me, applying them to memories and people and feelings. But then the song becomes popular and everyone starts singing it, making fun of it, spoofing it....or I just listen to it so many times or hear it so much that I forget to actually hear it, it just becomes background noise. But then I don't hear it for a while and it suddenly pops up somehow, whether it be when my Zune is on shuffle or because, as in this case, someone did a cover. 

Facing Your Own Mortality...

So as luck would have it, as soon as I decide to get this blog up and running, my constant health complications rear their ugly head. I'm used to being sick, so at first this was no big deal. I figured I'd just get a lot of rest and in a few days I would be up and running at my usual ridiculous pace. However, that was not to be the case. This time I was so sick that it warranted not only a trip to the ER but a week long hospital stay and another week of crazy amounts of medication and "taking things slow".

This whole experience has given me a lot of time to just lay around and really think. I've always known that the neck-breaking pace that I typically go at couldn't last. But I also always figured that I had things under-control. That I would slow down any time I wanted to. That I would never truly put myself in jeopardy no matter how many times I got sick.

But sometimes you don't have things as under control as you think. Sometimes you miss the signs when you attempt to put things off. And sometimes when you won't slow down, life forces you to slow down. I doubt you get that many warnings. So I'm going to take this hospitalization as my warning, and hopefully as a fresh start as well....

Whites are the Saviors of the Civil Rights Movement...At Least According to the Movies...

I should have known a long time ago by my taste in movies that I would somehow end up as a history major. I have always loved historical fiction and since I was young I would especially absorb any and every movie I could get my hands on about African Americans during the times of overt struggle-- classic movies that claimed to capture the essence of the black experience in America like Roots, Amistad, the Color Purple, etc. But I had a special interest in movies that concentrated on Jim Crow era or classics about the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s.

However, there was something about watching movies that concentrated on this period that never really fulfilled me. There was always a sense of something missing when I watched movies like Mississippi Burning, but I could never figure out what it was. There was an especially bad taste left in my mouth after reading the novel and then watching the film interpretation of the movie The Help, and I just couldn't put my finger on why I disliked them both so much. So I did some research. I searched the race blogs for an answer to my confusion and I found the best one on one of my favorite blogs racialicious. The article talks about how most times when Hollywood makes a Civil Rights Era movie, it has been from the prospective of a white protagonist and they are usually the savior of the blacks of the time, as it plays out in The Help.

Survival of the Fittest?

I was reading back through some of my old high school papers and came across some of my notes from my human genetics class. In the notes I found an extremely interesting quote from a book we read entitled The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature:

"Species do not get better at surviving, their chances of extinction are random. The struggle for existence never gets easier. However well a species may adapt to its environment it can never relax, because its competitors and its enemies are also adapting to their riches. The world is competitive to the death. It does keep changing. But the world keeps coming back to where it started. The is change, but no progress"

The basis of this theory is that in order to understand human nature we have to picture the "Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place...evolution is not about progress, but about changing in order to survive."

Room for Race in White Based Movements?

 

I have had a love/hate relationship with the "Occupy" movement. I've read and read and read about their cause until I felt like I understood it. There are plenty of things I agree with, the fact that there is so much economic disparity in the United States and no one is doing anything to fix it is something I can definitely get behind. But there have been more things than not that have just rubbed me the wrong way. This poster struck a chord with me. I admittedly don't know as much about this movement as I would like but just reading this makes me feel a whole lot better about them. These are the things I have yet to see Occupy address, and I've been waiting for it. And it's not like there aren't people of color in the movement, so why is this not more at the forefront of their mission? It puts me in mind of the Slut walks and how when that incident happened surrounding someone waving a sign that said "women are the niggers of the world"  black women had their throats jumped down by others in the movement and were told to not make it a "race issue". Made me wonder how long or how many times people of color have been/are/will be expected to put their race and "race issues" on the back burner to support essentially what has started out as or turned into a "white movement". 

Truest thing I've heard in a while

Sometimes you just need someone to shake you and wake you up. All things get better in the end...if it's not better then it's not the end...

What Mama Told Me

My Mama always used to say that I had two strikes against me: being black and being a woman, and that one identity could never be separate from the other. But balancing those two identities has always been a challenge for me. I've found it very easy for me to rally behind the causes of my race more so than the causes of my gender. It wasn't until I read the chapter in book "Freedom Daughters", about the battle between the feminist movement and black men over the right to vote and how black women were left between a rock and a hard place did I really begin to understand the complexities of my identities. And more so than that I began to recognize the reason for my discomfort with the feminist movement and getting involved in the cause. I am a BLACK woman and the normative for the word "woman" for so long has be and still is white. African American women and the feminist movement have always been at odds. And as evident by the drama surrounding the slutwalks, they still are. The struggle of Black women to navigate the cross identities is an age old one that all the black women of generations pass have had to deal with. Society seems to have demanded we make a choice, are we black or are we women? But then we can never be just one. I can never just be one. I am a complex, intricate mixture of them both. And I need to find a space to navigate that space.