Black POTUS Blues & the "Angry Black Man"

HuffPost Live:

 

Critics say the fear that white people will perceive blacks as "angry" is controlling President Obama's behavior. Is there danger in running away from stereotypes?

 

Hosted by:

 

• Marc Lamont Hill  

 

GUESTS:

 

• Trymaine Lee (New York, NY) Senior Reporter for HuffPost Black Voices @trymainelee
• Gayla Burks (New York, NY) Registered Democrat @Piquedmag
• Keli Goff (New York) HuffPost Contributor and Political Correspondent to TheRoot.com @keligoff
• Mark Anthony Neal (Durham, NC) Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University @NewBlackMan
• Tresa Edmunds (Modesto, CA) Activist and Writer for ReeseDixon.com @ReeseDixon

Sampling Michael: Rhythm, Masculinity & Intellectual Property in the ‘Body’ of Michael Jackson

Sampling Michael:  Rhythm, Masculinity & Intellectual Property in the ‘Body’ of Michael Jackson

by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

When Michael Jackson reached the commercial apex of his career in the mid-1980s, he did so not only on the strength of his formidable talent and creative vision, but also as the most visible embodiment of the broad traditions of African-American and Diasporic musicality.  Much has been made of Jackson’s early development on the chitlin’ circuit of the mid-west in the 1960s and the influence of popular figures like James Brown and Jackie Wilson on his performance.  Less has been made of the influence of vocalists like Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and notably William Hart of the Delfonics. Throughout his development Michael Jackson functioned as an archival resource of Black movement, voice, and gender performance, which he deftly managed and negotiated in performances that were as flawless as they were fluid.  As Michael Jackson was always in conversation with a broad range of Black vernacular expression, it would figure that he would ‘sample’ from Black Culture as often as he was ‘sampled’.  As such the free exchange of cultural practices and ideas that flowed through the body of Michael Jackson raises interesting questions about intellectual property and proprietary artistic rights and the ways that Black culture has historically subverted conventional wisdom in these matters.

Michele Wallace—in a critique of Jackson that is not nearly remembered enough—described Jackson at his creative peak in the 1980s as an emblem of “Black Modernisms,” Black artistic expression that was “in consistent pursuit of meaning, history, continuity and the power of subjectivity.”[i]  Michael Jackson’s Black Modernisms can be best evidenced in his signature performance on the Motown 25 (1983) broadcast, perhaps one the most chronicled “live” performances of Jackson’s career.  It would be useful to read Margo Jefferson here from her book simply titled, On Michael Jackson, where she describes Jackson as functioning throughout the Motown 25 performance as “hoofer,” “Soul Man,” “Song and Dance Man” showing elements of what Jefferson alternately names as “musical theater melodrama,” “chitlin circuit bravado” and “Motown mime.”  Jefferson could have just as easily inserted the names of Fred Astaire, James Brown, Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diana Ross and Stephanie Mills and her point would have been made just the same, but her choice of descriptive terms highlights the extent that Michael Jackson’s performance, though steep in tradition, regularly enacted a form of simultaneous recognition and erasure—the  latter act brought about by the nature of Jackson’s virtuosity.

Jackson’s inspirational archive was wide-ranging, but for my purposes I’m most interested in the Chitlin Circuit, which in the spirit of Jackson’s interests in the career of P. T. “The Greatest Show on Earth” Barnum, served as Jackson’s musical and performance circus. The Chitlin Circuit allowed Jackson to enact his signature performance gesture; that of rendering his primary influences as obscure, while making his own performance of those influences ubiquitous.  This move by Jackson is as much about his artistic ego—his interest in being the “Greatest Show on Earth”—as it was about his respect for cultural and racial communities that privileged the sharing of artistic expression beyond the scope of what we currently understand as intellectual property. As such Michael Jackson’s artistic sensibilities find resonance in the sampling practices largely associated with contemporary Hip-Hop production; practices that are themselves deeply indebted to communal sharing practices long valued in localized Black communities.

In a discussion on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with Neal Conan, noted cultural critic and music journalist Nelson George engaged in a spirited debate with fellow music critic Bill Wyman over the debt that Michael Jackson owed to Elvis Presley in terms of creating a pop music audience.  As always, underlying virtually every comparison between Presley and Jackson, is the question of the more specific debt Jackson owes to Presley’s music and accordingly, the oft-diminished influence that a earlier generation of Black Blues and Rhythm and Blues artists had on Presley. This is an old debate, one that Jackson sheds light on in his memoir Moonwalk, where he casually dismisses Presley’s influence—a tactical choice no doubt, regardless of whether truthful—choosing to instead to highlight the influence of Chitlin’ Circuit artists such as James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Joe Tex, whom he saw many times, standing in the wings on stage after he and his brothers opened for such acts on the Chitlin’ Circuit.  George’s desire to distance Jackson from Presley is fully in line with his broader project of establishing originary contexts for Black Music, one in which the claiming of Jackson within the Chitlin’ Circuit is crucial.  But such influences are multi-directional; When Wyman later mocked Jackson’s relationship with hip-hop—citing Justin Timberlake and Usher Raymond as examples of Jackson’s tangential influence on the Hip-Hop era, it was clear that Wyman hadn’t been listening or watching very closely.   

Part of Michael Jackson’s singular brilliance was his capacity to archive a virtual history of Black musical performance and movement and to then to reproduce this archival material beyond simple mimetic sensibilities to create something that was truly original.  As Richard Schur writes in his book Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law, “African American originality departs significantly from dominant notions of creativity…the creativity of black vernacular speech emphasizes  language use over language meaning.  It matters not whether a speaker/writer first coined a phrase, idea or expression; what matters is the art by which it is used to convey a new meaning and make a new connection.”[ii] As such Jackson turns simple understandings of intellectual property law on its head.  It is in this way that Jackson’s influences are simultaneously obscure, pronounced and as ubiquitous as the Black music traditions that inform him.  Even as a close reader of earlier generations of Black musicians, Bill Wyman might not have fully recognized Jackson’s artistic presence in hip-hop, because hip-hop is aligned with the very obscure/ubiquitous dynamic that frames Jackson’s art—even as hip-hip itself has found moments to directly sample or cite—for the more literary and legal types—Jackson himself.

Such a moment can be heard on the track “PSA” from Jay Z’s  S. Carter Mixtape, produced by Just Blaze and released in 2004.  Besides the spoken word introduction, the first voices that you hear is that of the Jackson 5, with Michael’s high-pitched falsetto searing above those of his brothers.  The sample is from the track “Walk On” which was a staple of the Jackson Five’s national tour from 1970 through 1971.  This particular sample was likely lifted from the soundtrack to the group’s “live” television special Going’ Back to Indiana which was broadcast in September of 1971.  The song itself was a reworking of Isaac Hayes’s brilliant re-arrangement of the Hal David and Burt Bacharach classic “Walk On By,” which was originally recorded by pop singer Dionne Warwick.  With a small repertoire of their own original songs during that initial national tour, the performance of “Walk On” did multiple labor, giving the group a foot in the deep orchestral funk that Hayes was crafting for the Stax label, as well as the Psychedelic Soul of groups like Sly and the Family Stone and Norman Whitfield produced Temptations.  Hayes later returned the favor by charting with Clifton Davis’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” only months after the Jackson did the same with the song. 

Yet in Jay Z and Just Blaze’s version of the song, included on a recording that is partly named in recognition of Jay Z’s proprietary intellectual property and a song that serves a momentary rupture of the seamless iconography that is Jay Z (as opposed to S. Carter), there is a consciousness of Michael Jackson’s presence in the production, if only because of the obscure and ubiquitous  nature of that presence.  As the hallmark of great sample based hip-hop production is to obscure the origins of the music, Michael Jackson is an early purveyor of such practices, essentially obscuring the Isaac Hayes original, which while continuing to stand on its own, has been sonically muted in the Jackson Five’s performance—something that was as much a tribute to the musicianship of the Jackson Five backing band—Chitlin’ Circuit veterans skilled in making themselves “present” in other people’s music—as it is for Jackson’s singular talents to lovingly erase traces of his own influences.  Some would call this virtuosity.  Again as Schur might describe theses practices, “Sampling is not simply the reshaping and reuse of recorded text, but a method of textual production…that proceeds by listening for and incorporating discrete parts, rather than completed wholes, and constructing an aesthetically satisfying text out of them.”[iii]

Such mimetic virtuosity was a hallmark of Michael Jackson’s performative gestures from the very beginning of his professional career.  As an adult he recalled that as a child he was “like a sponge, watching everyone and trying to learn everything I could.” Jackson’s working archive was the Chitlin Circuit, where he could literally, as he puts it in his memoir Moonwalk, study “James Brown, from the wings,” knowing “every step, every spin and turn.” Of Jackie Wilson, Jackson writes that he “learned more from watching [him] than from anyone or anything else.”  Again perhaps this is a tactical choice by Jackson, paying deference to Wilson five years after the singer’s death, though there is archival footage of Jackson’s Motown audition that looks like a “how to dance like James Brown” video.  Nevertheless the broader point is  made; Jackson may have been the most successful archivist of the Chitlin Circuit, though most of that influence was rendered transparent by Jackson’s mimetic genius.  Jackson himself outs part of his theft practices in a lyric from “I’ll Be There” where he swags  (or swanks, to shout out Dwele) Just look over your shoulder, honey” which is directly lifted from the late Levi Stubbs’s on the Four Tops’ track “Reach Out, I’ll Be There.”

Despite the post-race rhetoric that became as much a part of Jackson’s presentation in the late 1980s and 1990s as were the denials of sexual misconduct, Jackson was always in conversation with his influences as witnessed by the photos of The Manhattans, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross and Quincy Jones on the wall of the character Darryl’s apartment in the film short for the song “Bad.”  Little known fact, Vandross was expecting Jones to produce a debut solo album for him in the late 1970s, when the accident of fate, that was The Wiz (in which Vandross’s song “Everybody Rejoice” appears) brought Jackson and Jones together, changing the career trajectories of both Vandross and Jackson, who became the opposite poles of Black music and crossover pop in the 1980s, though Vandross was never as “rhythm and blues” and Jackson, never as “crossover pop” as some claimed.  Vandross’s photo in the video for “Bad” is akin to Jay Z saying to Lil’ Wayne a generation later, via a cell phone call,  “I see you.”  The short film for “Bad” was itself a sample from the tragic death of a Harlem prep school student Edmund Perry.

The oft-mentioned example of Jackson’s cover of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lovin’ You” is just the first of a long tradition within Jackson’s oeuvre of him sampling from the archive.  Recorded in the spring of 1969, when Jackson was ten-year-old, “Who’s Lovin’ You” has drawn attention because Jackson conveys a sense a carnal knowledge seemingly well beyond his years.  As he would clarify in Moonwalk, in the early days of the group’s struggles on the chitlin circuit, it was not unusual for the group to perform at strip clubs.  This sense of sexual knowing that becomes evident in Jackson’s early recordings as a child—it was indeed part of his appeal, as witnessed in the now famous “Shake it baby” break-down from “ABC”—is an example of how cultural retentions from the Chitlin’ circuit, or the Black aesthetic underground, are translated in terms of Jackson’s and other artists’ sense of movement, voice, and sexuality when they hit the pop mainstream.  It is also a reminder that Jackson was always/already in drag, well before the release of Thriller in late 1982.

Jackson is less convincing  covering Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine” on his solo debut in 1971—no one will ever claim that Jackson made it his song—but the version that appears on Got to Be There is all Michael Jackson, as if he and Withers made two different songs.  Jackson’s version embodies the rhythmic quality of his vocal instrument, another early example of the way that rhythm, movement and voice are seamlessly  embodied in Jackson’s performance—recalling Jay Z’s admission to Charlie Rose a few years ago that what initially attracted him to Beyonce was that she “she sang like a rapper.” The jagged melismic mutations that mark Beyonce’s own vocal strategy is perhaps one of the purest tributes to Jackson’s vocal strategies (with gospel singer Kim Burrell also present in the mix.).

Perhaps the best example of Jackson’s early sampling practices can be heard on an earlier cover of The Delfonics “Can You Remember?” as Jackson tries on the grown man begging vocals of William Hart, producing a performance more wistful than demanding.  Jackson’s vocal authority—his willful desire to obscure—is  not yet fully actualized, a reality that is recognized with the spate of “wanna be” Michael Jackson vocalists that crop up immediately with the success of the Jackson Five.  While the Osmond’s “One Bad Apple” produced by Muscle Shoals veteran Rick Hall was more an attempt to capture the “Jackson 5 in a bottle,” in comparison New Birth lead singer Londee Loree was a dead ringer for a young Michael Jackson on tracks like their cover of “Never Can Say Goodbye” or most famously “It’s Impossible.”  The New Birth tracks were notably produced by Motown veteran staffer Harvey Fuqua.

We began to see Michael Jackson’s vocal authority emerge with the signature grunts, slurs, gasps and “schumas” that become part of the repertoire of the adult performer, leading  artist Faith Ringgold to suggest to her daughter Michele Wallace that Jackson “makes up words.”  Jackson’s vocal expressions were likely a broader attempt, one that might have been unconscious, to sync  his sense of rhythm with movement and vocal expression.  This percussive aspect of Jackson’s vocals are enhanced until the end of his career and can be framed by his performances on “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” “Remember the Time” and later “Butterflies.”  The closing segment of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is heavily indebted to the music of Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango and his song “Soul Makoussa.”  While Jackson’s debt to African pop were fairly well-known among older Soul and Disco fans—“Soul Makoussa” was a big club hit in the US in the mid-1970s—Jackson refigures those rhythms in his vocal runs on “Remember the Time,” a song and video that brilliantly trades on the affinity among young African-Americans for nostalgia, via the cultural phenomenon known as “Afrocentricity.” Theorist Fred Moten has noted the virtuosity of Jackson’s performance on “Remember the Time” noting the different inflections that Jackson uses with each enunciation of “remember.”

Despite popular perceptions to the contrary, Michael Jackson and hip-hop are artistic kin because both invested in the notion of  a cultural system of sharing. According to Schur, “While [the] Hip-Hop aesthetic fails to conform to legal fictions about cultural and property law boundaries, the result is not a pervasive, infringing cultural aesthetic. Rather intellectual property law has failed to untangle abstract legal fictions about creativity from how ordinary people within a shared cultural system convey meaning through the recording of signs, symbols, metaphors and icons.”

***

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking For Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press). He is professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke University and the host of the Weekly Webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.

---

[i] Michele Wallace, Invisibility Blues….

[ii] Richard Schur, Parodies of Ownership: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and Intellectual Property Law, 29

[iii]  72.

Li’l Wayne and the New Politics of Cunnilingus in Hip Hop

Li’l Wayne and the New Politics of Cunnilingus in Hip Hop

by Heidi R. Lewis | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

When I was growing up, I remember receiving strong messages from hip hop that black men do not, for any reason, eat pussy.  One of the most famous examples has to be “Can I Eat It?” (1995) by DJ Quik.  Over a funk-laden sample of One Way’s “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” Quik declares, “You can keep that salmon sandwich to yourself!”  The chorus, heavily auto-tuned in the vein of Roger Troutman, more pointedly instructs, “Don’t eat eat the cooch!  Don’t eat the coochie!”  Well, okay, then.  Duly noted.

To be clear, DJ Quik is far from being the only rapper to declare a disdain for eating pussy.  On “I Need to Be” (1997), Mase raps, “And I never eat pussy, ‘cause I’m too stubborn in my ways.”  On “Freek-A-Leek” (2004), Petey Pablo raps, “And [she] love to get her pussy licked...by another bitch, ‘cause I ain’t drunk enough to that.”  More recently, on “Royal Flush” (2009) J. Cole raps, “So that must mean you want a nigga to eat that seafood.  Baby, don’t be foolish, but call her.  I’ll watch her do it.” 

It’s not a surprise, then, that a lot of women were jumping for joy when Li’l Kim burst on the scene with “Not Tonight” (1996), on which she and a chorus of women sing, “I don’t want dick tonight!  Eat my pussy right!”  In 2001, Foxy Brown gets help from Kelis on “Candy” when she raps, “Let me know when you ready to eat!”  A year later, on “Work It,” Missy Elliott raps, “Go downtown, eat it like a vulture.”  In 2006, Khia also rocked the hip hop world when she released “My Neck, My Back,” rapping, “Lick my pussy and my crack!”  As you can see, female rappers have been outright rejecting the “don’t eat pussy” narrative in hip hop for some time. 

The anti-cunnilingus stance in hip hop can most definitely be attributed to heterosexual black male politics.  In short, black men who claim they don’t eat pussy do so because it’s not “manly” to do anything sexual that is not pleasurable for the man, even though you know that’s not true if you’re a grown up.  This is why a lot of mainstream male rappers are lyrically all about getting their dick sucked, running trains, participating in threesomes or various other kinds of sexual orgies, and so on.  For those guys, it’s all about busting a nut, not making sure the woman they’re fucking gets hers.  You might be tempted to counter that these politics are not exclusive to black communities or even hip hop.  Well, you’d be right, but these issues do manifest themselves uniquely in black communities for several reasons.  For brevity’s sake, I’ll just suggest that you read up on the Buck and Jezebel stereotypes for more context.

So, what does this have to do with Li’l Wayne?  Intellectuals—academic or otherwise—have too easily dismissed Li’l Wayne as problematic along many lines.  We’ve heard and/or read it all before.  He’s an admitted drug addict.  He’s said terrible things about dark-skinned black women.  He arguably does not have any talent, even though it’s also been claimed that he doesn’t even write his own raps.  He’s a misogynist, sexist.  There’s enough of this floating in the air that I won’t spend a lot of time detailing those arguments here.  I’m more interested in nuancing existing conversations about Li’l Wayne, because someone needs to recognize the fact that Tunechi has recently, in some ways, begun to redefine hip hop masculinity by taking a stance that is extremely pro-cunnilingus. 

Let me give you some examples that are sure to have you clutching your pearls.  On “Upgrade” (2007), he raps “Let me just taste you.  We can fuck later.”  On “Time for Us to Fuck” (2007), he raps, “I’m on a strict diet.  I can only eat you.”  On “Pussy Monster” (2007), he raps, “When I lift my top lip, I could still smell you.  When I swallow my spit, I could still taste you.  Put that pussy in my face every time I face you.”  On the “Lollipop” remix (2008), he raps, “That pussy in my mouth had me loss for words.”  On “Mr. Carter” (2008), he raps, “I suck a pussy, fuck a pussy, leave it there.  Long hair don’t even care.”  On “She Will” (2011), he raps, “I like my girl thick, not just kind of fine.  Eat her ‘til she cry.  Call that wine and dine.”  On “So Special” (2011), he raps, “Just sit on my grill.  That’s that tailgate for ya.”  I’m wiping the sweat beads from my forehead as I type.

Let me simmer down so I can get back to the point.  To be fair, not all male rappers before or after Wayne have been unequivocally anti-cunnilingus.  On “If You Believe in Having Sex” (1989), 2 Live Crew chants, “All hoes suck dick!  All niggas eat pussy!”  On “Put It in Your Mouth” (1996), Akinyele features Crystal Johnson singing, “You can just eat me out!”  On “I’m Not a Player” (1998), Big Pun raps, “’Scuse me for being blunt, but I been eatin’ cunts since pimps was pushin’ Caddies with the fish tank pumps.”  On “What Means the World to You?” (2000), Cam’Ron features Keema rapping, “Sex is sweet with a cat who eat!”  On “Eat Pussy” (2007), N.O.R.E. raps, “I eat the pussy.  I’m a man about it.”  On “Prostitute” (2008), Juelz Santana raps, alongside Li’l Wayne, “I’ll eat that pussy up like a plate of food, and baby you make me wanna lick my fingers after.”

So what’s different about Wayne?  Well, eating pussy has become like a calling card for him, part of his signature style.  If you listen to an entire Li’l Wayne album released in the past 5 years, official or mixtape, you will hear references to eating pussy at least 5 times, probably more.  If not, I’d be willing to give you at least some of my next paycheck.  Some.  I still got bills, you know.  To be serious for a minute, though, the raps in which we can find these lines from Wayne are still chock full of traditional hip hop masculinity.  Even the pussy-eating lines are, a lot of times, linked to hypermasculine bravado, braggadocio, and ego. 

For example, on “Ain’t I?” (2008), he raps, “But I don’t pizza.  I eat pussy when he wouldn’t.”  Here, the woman’s pleasure is still tied up in competition between men—I eat her pussy when you won’t, and I do it better than you.  On the other hand, there’s a lot of mutual satisfaction going on in Li’l Wayne raps that we’d be remiss to ignore.  On “My Birthday” (2011), he raps, “I gotta wipe my diamond grill with a tissue.  I talk too much shit.  I eat pussy, and you suck dick.”  On the “Lollipop” remix, he also raps, “The middle of the bed…givin’, gettin’ head.”  On “Wayne on Me” (2009), he raps, “She kiss me mine.  I kiss hers back.  If she a bad bitch, she deserve that.”  Now, yes, there’s that whole thing about what kind of woman does and doesn’t deserve to “get head” from Wayne—again with the policing of women’s sexuality.  Still, it’s especially interesting that, at least for Li’l Wayne, it’s no longer just about having the biggest dick or best stroke.  It’s also about being able to serve your woman up with fierce tongue action.  Huh?  Tell me that’s not different.

So, what do we do now?  I’m not asking that we slap a feminist label on Li’l Wayne, even if we only slap it on his willingness to pleasure a woman sexually.  Throwing around the feminist label is not the best use of my intellectual time and energy—at least not right now.  However, recognizing the ways in which Li’l Wayne challenges hegemonic black masculinity is just as important as thrashing his ass when he subscribes to and reinforces those very ideals.  And don’t come for me with that, “It’s just sex!” line.  Patricia Hill Collins already schooled us on the importance of examining, challenging, and revising black sexual politics.  Along those lines, Li’l Wayne is openly calling out his hip hop brothers out on their sexual immaturity.  Eating pussy may not be for every brother, but if that’s the case only because you think it makes you less of man, you need to grow up and take a cue from the President of YMCMB:

“Imagine if I did that—put your pussy on my tongue!”

***

Heidi R. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College.  Her teaching and research focuses on feminism, gender and sexuality, women’s writing, African American literature and culture, Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Media Studies. 

'Out of Bounds': Why Ball Players Can Hug And Kiss Each Other, But Other Men Can’t (a film short by Sylvia Harvey)

from NewsOne:

In the Black community, men who express even a passing, friendly physical affection toward each other are often subject to ridicule and homophobic attacks.

But on the basketball court, the sight of men kissing, hugging and patting each others’ backsides scarcely draws a comment.

Why is that? In “OUT OF BOUNDS” — an exclusive NewsOne documentary — journalist Sylvia A. Harvey explores the strange double-standard that allows Black men to express intimacy on the basketball court, but keeps a tight lid on those feelings and actions off the court.

Tongues Untied: On 'Barbershop Conversations,' Black Masculinity, and Sexuality

Tongues Untied: 

On 'Barbershop Conversations,' Black Masculinity, and Sexuality

by Darnell L. Moore & Wade Davis, Jr. | HuffPost BlackVoices

This is our second conversation as part of our Huffington Post series, "Tongues Untied: Wade Davis, II and Darnell L. Moore in Conversation." (Read the first conversation here.) The title of our column is our way of paying tribute to the many black gay men who have given us the language and ancestral strength to freely live our lives as black gay men today. Many will notice that our title bears the name of Marlon Riggs' semi-documentary film Tongues Untied, which brought to the fore a vital conversation on racial and sexual difference in the U.S.

We recognize that the freedom we have to name ourselves and to write words, which we hope others will find transformative, exists because of the lives and legacies of those who came before us. We are thankful to extend conversations on race and sexuality started by folks like Riggs, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Colin Robinson, and so many others, in this series, not because we think that we can match their brilliance but because we realize that so many others have been speaking truth before us and have challenged us to do the same.

What follows is a dialogue on what we call "barbershop conversations."

Wade: I have been having the most amazing conversations recently about gender, sex, and sexual orientation with my barber since he found out I was gay. And I look forward to going to the barbershop and spending two hours there more than ever before.

Darnell: That's ironic. Most people don't imagine barbershops, especially those serving black folk, to be spaces where people freely talk about those issues. And when issues related to sex and sexuality are discussed in barbershops, people seem to think that the conversations always take a homophobic or sexist turn. I've experienced a range of conversations, some good and some bad, taking place in the spots that I've been in. I am interested in hearing about your motivation for telling you barber that you were gay, though. What actually happened?

Wade: Well, I didn't actually tell him I was gay. He read an article about me on ESPN.com, and when I walked in the shop and sat down, he said, "Oh my God, did any of you hear about the gay football player named Wade Davis? Imagine if that guy walked in the shop and no one even knew who he was." Then he looked at me and said, "Wait, isn't your name Wade Davis?" I was speechless, and I couldn't do anything but laugh, because he was smiling at me so big. I just smiled and laughed uncontrollably. Are you out to your barber?

Darnell: That would have made me extremely nervous. I mean, that was a forced type of public disclosure, but I understand that he was trying to be cool. My barber and I have a great relationship that developed as a result of me boycotting his shop. He was cutting another customer's hair. The guy kept using words like "faggot" and "sissy" during his conversation with my barber. I wasn't sure if he decided to elevate his voice and increase the number of derogatory comments that he spewed because I happened to be sitting directly in front of him and he assumed me to be gay, but it angered me, so I politely left with my money in hand and didn't return for six months or so. I even encouraged friends not to return until one day, while out of town, my barber called me and asked why it was that I hadn't returned. I let him know that I'd decided to keep my money (tip and all) because he'd let another customer use language that hurt me. The funny thing is I never actually disclosed my sexual identity. He apologized over the phone and invited me to talk with him over lunch upon my return. Since then, we've been comfortable talking about anything. I have a lot of love for him and his girlfriend. I actually love telling this story, because people tend to think that black heterosexual men are somehow less capable of engaging their same-gender-loving/gay/bi brothers, yet we have examples showing that this isn't always the case.

Wade: Exactly! To be honest, I never would have imagined having conversations about homosexuality and sexism in my barbershop. I'm so proud of you for speaking up, though; I'd like to think I would have done the same thing. But I will say that I don't always agree with my barber and some of the patrons on some of the issues like homosexuality and, especially, views on women (which are sometimes sexist), but I love the fact that we can at least have the conversation.

Darnell: How do you negotiate "tough" conversations in the barbershop? Do you find yourself talking or acting differently (i.e., more "manly")? Do you feel pressured to insert that you have a male partner if they are talking exclusively about women?

Wade: Fortunately, I do not feel pressured to perform a certain way, because 90 percent of the time the conversations are about sports (my specialty) or music, so I feel authentic having those discussions. When it comes to relationships, I would intentionally use the word "partner" to see the reaction, but strangely enough, no one ever said anything. I won't lie, though: I did, at some points in various conversations, feel the pressure to conform, to fit in, but I never wanted to disrespect my partner by referring to him as a woman, as I did in my past. When I wasn't "out" I experienced more trepidation at my barbershop when people were having specific conversations. I had to really contemplate what I would say and how I would act. Since you were "out," how did you navigate those situations?

Darnell: Well, I was never really "in." I try not to think of myself as a one-dimensional being. I mean, the persons I choose to love and/or engage with sexually is one aspect, an important one for sure, of my whole self. So, whether I am in a barbershop or not, I try not to narrowly define myself or allow others to do the same, for that matter. But, like you, I have not always spoken up during some "barbershop conversations," whether they occurred in the actual shop or not. There are moments when I overheard sexist statements, words that dehumanized women, and even homophobic comments and I remained silent. There were moments when I was honestly nervous to speak up. I'm not sure what that was/is about. What provoked my silence? What was I afraid of? Why are we men (some of us, anyway) afraid of confronting each other over sexism and homophobia? There's a lot of anxiety that comes as the result of feeling the need to constantly acquiesce to racialized gender norms that harm us more than they heal us. It takes a lot of futile work to perform "the man," to perform a caricature created by others that will never allow space for us to be our best selves.

Wade: Yes! That's exactly how I feel. There has to be a space where my sexuality can be silent, where I can choose to disclose or not disclose and not feel as if I'm disrespecting the "gay community" for not saying I'm gay during a conversation in a space where my safety can be at risk, and also when I just want to exist as a person for a moment, not as a fragment of a whole person -- gay one day and black another, or trying to pass as straight -- but as me, Wade (whether I am talking about Jay-Z or D. Wade), without feeling as if I've let down the gay community or the black community.

Darnell: Is your sexuality ever "silent"?

Wade: "Silent" may have been the wrong word choice, but it does go unnamed unless I announce to the world that I'm gay, and I don't always feel compelled to make that proclamation in certain spaces where I just want to be Wade and not "the gay male" or "the athlete" or "the partner." Not to compare athletics to sexuality, but I often engage in conversations about football with people who don't know I'm an ex-NFL player, and I don't announce my history, just because I don't want to be the "expert" or the token "jock." And I know many would say I have great privilege in being able to exist without naming my orientation, and that's true, but I also shouldn't be criticized because of it.

Darnell: I get it. As we discussed before, the power to name exists in the hands of the individual or communities whom others have attempted to name, historically. Yet, we are always are sexual (and, therefore, political) selves at all times. And, let's go there. We may have felt safe or comfortable in spaces like the barbershop, and we may have experienced acceptance because of our gender presentations, whether we disclosed our sexual identities or not. I think about that often. But to say that a barbershop, street, or neighborhood is safe for all LGBTQ people is to forget that not all LGBTQ people share the same privileges that we do. For example, would a feminine-performing brother be safe in your barbershop? Would a masculine-performing sister feel safe in mine? We may "get by" because folk feel safe with us. We may not provoke folk in ways that disrupt their levels of comfort, but when we do, I am sure that we, too, may discover that safety is relative. To put it another way, folk tend to perceive us to be masculine (read: "straight") black men... you probably more than me. We receive a certain type of acceptance and receptivity because of that perception. And that's the problem. Folk are less concerned about whom we love or sleep with. They react and are provoked initially by what they perceive, what they see in terms of our clothing choices (which may also have something to do with perceived economic status), the way we talk, walk, etc. Gender performances that don't fit the script that society has written for us make people uncomfortable. And I am totally fine with others experiencing that type of discomfort.

Wade: See, that's the point. I don't try to perform anymore. I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm learning to love myself, and acting as I did in the past isn't a part of that self-love process, but people still read me as straight, and it's not always my responsibility to inform them otherwise unless I see fit.

Darnell: "Straight" thinking is the problem, for sure.

Wade: But I have to give my barber credit. He's been great ever since he learned of my sexual orientation. He still asks if anyone knows that "Wade Davis character" -- the gay football player. It makes me laugh every single time, but he doesn't "out" me in a negative way. His bringing up the "gay football guy" in the shop has allowed customers to discuss everything from Frank Ocean to sexism and misogyny to HIV in the black community to the prison-industrial complex like never before. I even convinced him to go out and purchase Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. So I do see the power of naming myself gay, inviting folk into that part and other aspects of my life, in a presumed straight-dominated space.

Darnell: I hear you. I love that you talk about those topics with your barber. I want to challenge this idea that black straight men are incapable of loving black queer/gay/bi/same-gender-loving men, and vice versa. I think that it is expedient to produce that narrative, because it divides us and feeds the misconception that black and brown folk are more homophobic than white folk, but there are so many examples of black men loving black men, as Joseph Beam would say, whose mutual love and respect is revolutionary. The story of your barber, and mine, are but a few.

Wade: Exactly. I'm blessed to have a barber and fellow patrons who are willing to discuss these seemingly explosive issues in such a way that makes me feel welcomed and my perspective appreciated and, in some ways, desired. This is how our community starts to come together in love and solidarity to effect change. Though it may seem to be on a small scale, the effects can last a lifetime, especially when I think that my barber has a son who may have an LGBTQ classmate or teacher, and knowing that I may have helped change my barber's perspective and, therefore, affected his life and that of his son.

***

Darnell L. Moore is a writer and activist who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University. 

Wade Davis is a nationally-recognized speaker, activist, writer and educator. Davis is a former NFL football player who played for the Tennessee Titans, Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks, as well as two different teams within the NFL Europe league. He is also an LGBT Surrogate for President Obama. In the role of surrogate he speaks at events on behalf of the President. Also he's a member of the GLSEN sports advisory board - where he advocates for creating safe spaces for LGBT youth. He also has an autobiography coming out in early 2013 entitled Interference.

Ill Doctrine: Frank Ocean’s Independence Day

Why “coming out” without using any one label might have a power all its own.

Language & The Criminalization of Black Masculinity

Treva Lindsey, Regina Bradley and Scott Heath at the Ohio State Hip-Hop Literacies Conference (May 2012)

Funk Music and Superheroic Black Masculinities

from White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in American Comics 

(dir. Jonathan Gayles)

Dr. Scot Brown is a professor of History and African American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Hailing from Rochester, NY, he went on to earn doctoral and masters degrees in History and Africana Studies from Cornell University. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Brown taught at the Université d’Haute Bretagne in France, San Francisco State University, University of Houston and Cornell University. 

Brown is the author of the pioneering book, Fighting For Us, a study of cultural nationalism and the Black Power movement during the 1960s. He is the author of many scholarly articles on popular culture and political movements. Dr. Brown has appeared in historical documentaries including the prize-winning– 41st and Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers– and most recently the TV ONE television series “Unsung,” with its episode on the R & B band known as “Heatwave.”

The Elbow Heard Around the Nation: The NBA and the End of ‘Peace’

The Elbow Heard Around the Nation: The NBA and the End of ‘Peace’

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

When Ron Artest announced his intent to change his name to Metta World Peace, I had discussions with several people about potentially changing the name of my book, After Artest (May 2012, SUNY Press) to reflect his metamorphosis. Examining how the Palace Brawl forever changed the NBA, while also highlighting the larger scripts of race and criminalization, After Artestreflects on the processes of demonization and criminalization directed at Artest and his black baller brethren in the aftermath of the 2004 fight between the Pacers-Pistons-Piston fans.  While deciding against changing the book’s title for a myriad of reasons, one principle issue for me in pushing back against a title like “Peace after the Palace” was that in spite of efforts from the NBA, its fans, and the media establishment to police, punish, and control blackness in their efforts to secure peace, neither condemnations and suspensions, dress codes or age restrictions, would bring about peace for the league because of the ways that race and racial narratives operate within the American cultural landscape.  The efforts to recreate the illusion of a racially-colorblind Jordan-esque landscape were futile given persistent anti-black racism and governing stereotypes.  Peace after the palace was not possible because of the ways that blackness and anti-black racism overdetermined its meaning within the national landscape.  Artest and what he embodied in the national imagination guided and served as a lens as the NBA sought to deracialize itself within the national imagination.  This is why I start After Artest as follows:

“The real question, how does it feel to be a problem” – W.E.B. DuBois, 1903 (Quoted in Jackson 2006, p. 9)

Ron Artest more than likely will be suspended, but so should Kobe” (Resnick 2009)

“Kobe vs. Artest: Proof Artest Will Kill Your Team” (2009)

“NBA Bad Boy Ron Artest of L.A. Lakers Admits He Had A Problem: Drinking During Games! ” (Douglas 2009)

“Trevor Ariza loses shoe, Ron Artest tosses it into the stands” (2009).

Artest, who's trying to put his bad-boy image behind him, said he could simply display his ring in his living room or he could wear it.' But I think it'll be more important to give back to something I believe in, which is providing kids with someone to talk to because it's so expensive. I pay for parenting counseling, marriage counseling and anger management, and it's very expensive. This will be for children of all demographics, rich or poor — preferably the rich can pay for their own psychologists — but it'll be a great way to help kids who don't know where they're going in their life at this point' ("Ron Artest Plans" 2010)

*** 

Artest, who's trying to put his bad-boy image behind him, said he could simply display his ring in his living room or he could wear it.' But I think it'll be more important to give back to something I believe in, which is providing kids with someone to talk to because it's so expensive. I pay for parenting counseling, marriage counseling and anger management, and it's very expensive. This will be for children of all demographics, rich or poor — preferably the rich can pay for their own psychologists — but it'll be a great way to help kids who don't know where they're going in their life at this point' ("Ron Artest Plans" 2010)

***

At first glance, the above headlines point to the fact that Ron Artest’s personal history, and especially his association with the Palace Brawl, continues to determine the public narrative assigned to him by the dominant media and broader public discourse. Even those instances of praise and celebratory redemption does so in relationship to his past indiscretions. Despite the banality of his exchange with Kobe and his tossing of another player’s shoe off the court (his sportsmanship was questioned by an announcer), and notwithstanding his efforts to admit to a past drinking problem1 or shed light on the issue of mental health, each in varying degrees have been the read through the lens of the Palace Brawl.

In 2009, Ron Artest admitted to drinking alcohol at halftime while he was a member of the Chicago Bulls. Hoping to teach kids by sharing his past mistakes, Artest’s admission, not surprisingly, prompted much media and public debate. Although some people questioned the truthfulness of his admission, others used this moment as an opportunity to speculate about whether Artest was indeed drunk when he entered the stands in 2004. Likewise, his tossing of Trevor Ariza’s shoe into the stands, along with his physical and verbal altercations with Kobe Bryant, were given amplified meaning and importance considering his role. In all four instances, Artest’s past and his character are used as points of reference.

Often invoking his involvement in the 2004 Palace Brawl, the dominant frame that facilitates his representations is not only constrained by Artest’s personal and professional histories, but by the prism of race and blackness. He is consistently imagined as a problem. The nature of these representations point to the ways in which blackness overdetermines not only the meaning of Artest, but of all black NBA players in a post-Brawl context. Post-Artest, blackness is the hegemonic point of reference for both the commentaries and the policy shifts within the NBA, demonstrating that the Palace Brawl changed the racial meaning of the NBA and thus changed the regulatory practices governing the league. . . . .

The Palace Brawl was the culmination of the recoloring of the NBA. It represented a moment when the blackness of the league was irrefutable and thus needed to be managed, controlled, and, if necessary, destroyed. After Artest argues that the Palace Brawl served as that “aha moment” in which blackness displaced the racially transcendent signifier of Michael Jordan. This blackness, and its representative threat, were undeniable and, as such, necessitated intervention, termed as an assault within this book’s title. Not surprisingly, anti-black racist/white racial frames have anchored the debates and policies that have followed Artest; frames based on racial transcendence or colorblindness remain in the background. In this sense, Artest mandated a reversal wherein race/blackness had to be noticed (and controlled/destroyed), leading to public articulations of the white racial frame instead of denials of racial significance.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that the sports media establishment, and the social media world is all abuzz following a Metta World Peace foul on James Harden on Sunday in a nationally televised game.  A hard foul that was reckless and dangerous; one that warranted an injection (unlike others I have no idea his “intent”) and a suspension; and one that was disappointing to say the least and not worry of defense. I am not here to defend the foul or explain, although those who use the foul as a referendum on Metta, the NBA, or blackness need to check themselves. 

It was unfortunate; yet equally unfortunate and more destructive have been the response.   Hayden Kim, on The Bleacher Report, referenced Metta’s “unstable mental stable” and an inability to maintain control; worse yet, he described his outburst in the following way:  “As he pounded his chest, acting like a gorilla during mating season, he caught James Harden with an ill-advised elbow that could have caused an earthquake” (the original piece no longer has this language but can still be found here and here).  The hyperbole notwithstanding, the descriptor of Metta as a “gorilla” given its historic meaning is disturbing to say the least – disgraceful, in fact. 

Ken Berger focused more on the typical hyperbole and ‘what ifs” with his discussion of the elbow heard around the world.  “Metta World Peace's vicious, dangerous elbow to the head of James Harden Sunday was no garden variety NBA elbow, and it probably will result in longer than your typical elbowing suspension,” writes Berger. “It should, anyway. This was about as cheap as a cheap shot gets. It'll have nothing to do with the fact that Metta World Peace is really Ron Artest, he of Malice at the Palace fame. World Peace, after all, has come a long way since his 73-game suspension for going into the stands in Auburn Hills, Mich., in 2004, and even won the NBA's citizenship award last season (when his name was still Ron Artest).”  Berger, unlike so many others notes his recent citizenship award, falls into the trap that he cautions against: reading the incident through the Palace Brawl. 

This incident, and the entire NBA are always read through the Palace Brawl and the meaning of blackness.  How else can we explain the reactions, the twitter trends, the web comments, and the statements from the likes of Mike Breen (who called it “disgraceful”), whose initial commentary added fuel to the fire? I don’t think this was first elbow (or even elbow that connected) or flagrant foul in the NBA?  Clearly there is something more at work!  How else can we explain Magic Johnson’s rush to judgment, “It was intentional — and a cheap shot”?    While clearly able to enter Metta’s head (a common place), Johnson gives World Peace zero benefit of the doubt.  Metta’s body, the meaning of blackness, and the signifiers of NBA ballers precludes reading it as just a foul or a bad foul, but instead a commentary on Metta, on the NBA, on blackness.  How else can we explain Jon Barry continually referencing Ron Artest’s reputation at the same time that he calls him “metta weird peace?”  How else can we explain Jason Whitlock who tweeted, “Ron Artest is too unstable to play in the league.  I'd consider a lifetime ban. Seriously. Next guy he hurts should sue the league.”  The reaction isn’t to the foul but to the person and the body who committed the foul.  The endless tweets are telling:

Ron Artest changing his name to Metta World Peace is like Joseph #Kony changing his to Childrens Rights Activist

ICYMI: Here's the clip of Metta World Peace nearly decapitating James Harden

Lynch metta world peace

Enough of this guy. Kick him out of the league. His act is tired> Metta World Peace FLAGRANT FOUL on James Harden!:

Metta World Peace #WTF Dude.....You're now banned from watching Jon Bones Jones on anymore UFC Telecast! U R in the NBA not the UFC #SMH

Metta World War Peace just broke out at Staples Center! Ron Ron is officially IN the building.

Metta World Peace is the dirtiest player in the NBA #disgraceful

The continued references to his mental state; the constant links to the Palace Brawl, the efforts to overstate and dramatize the elbow, and the efforts to pathologize and demonize Metta as person as opposed to the foul are telling.  It was yet another “aha” moment, where the NBA’s efforts to quell fan anxieties about black bodies has been put to the test.  Artest plus elbow to head causes anxiety and anger, which in part is wrapped in the racial scripts of black masculinity.  Kevin Love’s “stomp” or Jason Smith’s decking of Blake Griffin certainly did not evoke panics and calls for lifetime bans, lynchings, or incarceration.  The sight of Love stepping on his opponent’s face or Jason Smith leveling Griffin didn’t elicit panics because their actions and bodies don’t stroke the fear, panics, and stereotype.  This isn’t a justification of the flagrant foul or a call for Metta to get a pass, but rather an effort to help explain the panics and national outrage that extends beyond the basketball court.  It was yet another moment where the NBA’s (and Metta’s) image, the meaning of blackness within the national imagination.  No apology, no explanation, and no amount of contrition will allow for forgiveness in the short term (only punishment serves that capacity) or in the long term, where from this point Metta will known be known for the Palace and Elbow, both overdetermined by narratives and scripts that predominant the cultural landscape.  

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackManand blogs @ No Tsuris.