Rashaad Thomas on the State of the Arts in Metro Phoenix
Phoenix New Times
When Jackalope Ranch issued a 10-question survey asking Phoenicians (and anyone with an opinion of Phoenix) to sound of on the state of the arts in the Valley of the Sun, dozens provided insights on what’s happening in the city’s creative realm. We’ll present a selection of survey responses here over the next three weeks. Up today is poet and fashion designer Rashaad Thomas.
Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
“Emancipatory Education”
Amendment XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
During Arizona State University’s (“ASU”) Fall Semester 2014, I was enrolled in a course held at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (“SDOCCL”). The first day of the semester, I took a free moment to tour the beautiful, yet unfamiliar building. During my tour, I noticed that there were only two other people who looked like me out of the large number of people present. The only two people were faces of color on a faculty profile photo poster.
Read more at: https://ljsj.wordpress.com
I am no one different from any other systematically created Black man. But, I know that I existed before colonization. I am aware genetically I am conditioned and affected in many ways. Like many Black folks I experience chronic blood pressure. Now, that I have a wife and a child on the way I know its important to make a valiant effort in controlling the fear of dying young, much like my father who died from a result of chronic blood pressure at the age of 47 years old.
I am exploring a jog transition to meditative walk all while chanting, “Om Mani Padme Hum.” I remember in United States Air Force basic training we had to sing in cadence while marching double time. It helps to sync the rhythm and harmony of the vibrations of singing, marching, and breathing. I attempt a similar method to enable my body temperature and heart rate to rise in a healthy manner and then transition to a meditative walk to see if I am able to control my heart rate according to the pace of my steps. This morning a public service vehicle interrupted my practice with its giant colored ears on its roof pointing at me in the shadows. I have learned how to decipher the kind of car, Public Service Vehicle vs. POV, while it shares the same path with me according to the approach of the lights and the shadows collaboration with the streetlights.
I saw the service vehicle in the reflection of the darkness painted on the streets. Immediately, I thought to myself, “Dang it I am running. I need to slow down to a walk.” I turn and the vehicle follows me and suddenly a flash of bright lights hit me. I maintain a consistent pace not to alarm the public service vehicle with colored ears. The bright lights return to normal and it turns off into a driveway. I look back and into my peripheral slightly and I am relieved it is only a SUV with red stripes and not blue stripes painted on its sides and tape that reads, “Scottsdale Fire Department.” I continue my practice and return home. I can’t help but beat myself up for allowing fear and societal conditioning to reduce me to thanking a higher being for allowing me to return home alive.
#BlackLivesMatter
They keep killing us
again again and again
again and again
As the unarmed Black 18 year-old, Mike Brown, who was fatally shot and killed by the now fugitive Officer Darren Wilson was laid to rest on August 25, 2014, the outside agitators, the media begin to trickle off into the body of America like a drip of a bad bag of coke. Immediately the media is replaced with the Black Consciousness of the Black Lives Matter Movement who traveled from all over the United States to congregate in St. Louis/ Ferguson MO to recall, revisit, return, and reclaim their voices. For weeks the media capitalized on the suffering of the Black body and twisted and turned their Black voices to subtly fit into the book of America’s Mythology. Black Lives Matter are rewriting history because they know the murder of Mike Brown is not a fading story for American Mythology’s storyteller to build White capital, but the true story of both pain and power that Black communities share in churches, homes, and schools everyday.
Similar to post Jim-Crow era’s segregationists’ Governor George Wallace and Eugene “Bull” Connor, post-racial society’s Governor Jay Nixon and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder lamented about the “outside agitators” who heard the call for a rebellion in honor of Black Lives similar to how Dr. Martin Luther King and Freedom Riders traveled from the North to protest Jim and Jane Crow illegitimate children, Racism and Segregation their lives down for the freedom of our country. Yes, this is our country. Together. James Baldwin once said, “I love America more than any other country in the world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her.”
1. (Portand 2010) Unarmed. Aaron Campbell shot in the back by Officer Ronald Frashour. Officer Frashour reinstated and given back pay after investigation was completed.
2. (Brooklyn 1997) Unarmed 30 yr . old, Abner Louima was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with the hand of a broom by New York City police officers after being arrested outside of Brooklyn nightclub.
3. (Detroit 2010) Unarmed 7 yr. old Aiyana Mo”nay Stanley Jones was shot and killed by during a raid by the Detroit Police Department’s Special Response Team on May 16, 2010. He death dream national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Coyners to ask U.S. Attorney General Erick Holder for a federal investigation into the incident.
4. ( New York, 2000) Unarmed, 23 yr. old Amadou Diallo, immigrant from Guinea who was fired on 41 times as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in the Bronx.
5. (Denver 2011) Unarmed, 29 yr. old Alonzo Ashley retrained and tazed to death by security officer.
6. (Memphis, Arkansas, 2007) Unarmed, 12 yr. old DeAunta Terrell Farrow was shot twice can killed holding a toy gun.
7. (New York, 1984) Unarmed, 73 yr. old Eleanor Bumpus was an African-American woman who was shot on October 29, 1984 by police enforcing a city ordered eviction from her apartment in the Bronx.
8. (Atlanta 2012) Unarmed, 18 yr. old Ervin Jefferson shot and killed by two private security guards.
9. (Vallejo 2010) Un”Armed”, 34 yr. old, Guy Jarreau Jr., who was a Katrina evacuee, psychology major and working with local youth, was shot and killed by Vallejo Police while holding gun, not posing a threat, recording a video with youth.
https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForGuyJarreauJrJaredHueyM…
10. (Danziger Bridge, New Orleans 2005) Unarmed, James Brissette and Ronald Madison, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the city’s police department killed 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. New Orleans police fabricated a cover-up story for their crime, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four people were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. On August 5, 2011, a new Orleans Federal Court jury convicted five police officers of a myriad of charges related to the cover-up deprivation of civil rights.
James Brissette was shot seven times by guns including a AK-47, another rifle and a shot gun.
Ronald Madison, died from massive internal bleeding caused by a shotgun blast to his back.
https://www.facebook.com/…/Remember…/139997202693027
11. (Brooklyn 2013) Unarmed, 16 yr. old Kimani Gray was shot to death by police on the evening March 9, 2013 Two plain clothes officers confronted Kimani after noticing behavior they considered suspicious, including adjusting his waistband. A police spokelsman claimed that Kimani then threatened the officers with a revolve, but eyewitnesses to the shooting publicly contradicted this claim. The officers shot 11 rounds, hitting Kimani sevent times in the leg and stomach.
12. (Pasadena 2012) Unarmed, 19 yr. old, Kendrec McDade was fatally shot by Pasadena police. Police officers were responding to a report of a robbery when they saw a man later identified as McDade and pursued him. Officers believed Kendrec McDade was armed with a gun based on false information from a 911 caller.
13. (Bedford-Stuyvesant) Unarmed, 18 yr. old Khiel Coppin was fired up of a hail of 20 bullets by five police. Believe to be armed, when shooting had ceased, he was found holding a hairbrush.
14. (Champaign 2009) Unarmed, 15yr. old Kiwane Carrington was shot to death in an incident with police officers during a suspected home invasion. It took nearly 7 months for the officer involved in the shooting to be suspended for 30 days without pay.
15. (Cleveland 2012) Unarmed, 43 yr. old and 30 yr. old Malissa Williams involved in a car chase ending with 13 officers firing 137 rounds into the car.
16. (Brooklyn 1983) Unarmed, 25 yr. old, black graffiti artist, Michael Stewart was strangled to death by police officers after being arrested for spray-painting graffiti on a subway station wall.
17. (Las Vegas 2003) Unarmed, 28 yr. old Orlando Barlow, a suspect in a domestic disturbance at the southwest Las Vegas home of his girlfriend, is unarmed and on his knees when he is shot by Las Vegas police officer Brian Hartman. Hartman testified he thought Barlow was fidgeting in his waistband for a gun. The shooting was unanimously ruled justifiable, but Hartman and two other officers were fired after they printed T-shirts with the initials “BDRT” — “Baby’s Daddy Removal Team.”
18. (Oakland 2009) Unarmed, 23 yr. old, Oscar Grant II was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehersele in Oakland, California, in the early morning of New Years Day. Lying faced and allegedly resisting arrest was shot in the back.
19. (New York 2003) Unarmed 33 yr. old Ousmane Zongo, was shot four times, twice in the back, during a raid on a Manhattan storage facility. Officer Conroy did not receive jail time by was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and was given five years probation, automatically losing his job with the NYPD.
20. (New York 2000) Unarmed, 26 yr. old Partick Dorismond was shot and killed during a scuffle with a shot to the chest by undercover NYPD officer, Anthony Vasquez.
21. (Los Angeles 2011) Unarmed, 25 yr. old Reginald Doucet Jr. was shot twice and killed by LAPD Police Officer.
22. (Chicago 2012) Unarmed, Rekia Boyd was shot and killed by off-duty Chicago police detective. An off-duty detective rolled down his car window and asked a group of people gathered near Douglas Park to quiet down. In response, police say, a 39-year-old man pointed a gun at the officer, who drew his own weapon and fired. The bullets hit the alleged gunman in the hand and Rekia Boyd in the head as she stood nearby. Witnesses say no one pulled a gun on the off-duty detective.
23. (Queens 2006) Unarmed, 26 yr. old Sean Bell, one of three men shot at 50 times by a team of plainclothes and undercover NYPD officer, killing Sean Bell one day before his wedding.
24. (Los Angeles 2010) Unarmed, 27 yr. old Steven Eugene Washington was shot in the head and killed by police officers after what police report he reached into his waistband for what they believe was a weapon.
25. (Ohio 2010) Unarmed, 26 yr. old Tarika Wilson was shot killed by a SWAT Team that ariived at Tarika Wilson’s rented home to arrest her companion, on suspiciaon of drug dealing. Officers tore into the front door of the home with guns drawn. Officers opened fire on Tarika Wislon while wounding her 14 month-old son.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/30lima.html
26. ( Sanford 2005) Unarmed, 16 yr. old Traveres McGill was in a parked car with a group of friends in the parking lot of the an apartment complex. The security guards made a routine stop and shined a light into the car that Traveres McGill and his friend were in, and the kids panicked. As Traveres McGill backed up and tried to speed away, he was shot in the back.
27. (Sanford 2012) Unarmed, 17 yr. old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by self-proclaimed neighbor hood coordinator, George Zimmerman.
28. (Pensecola 2009) Unarmed, 17 yr. old Victoria Steen was struck and killed by the cruiser Pensecola Police Officer Jerald Ard while riding his bicycle. Officer Ard claims to have spotted Steen at an empty construction site around 1:50 AM and attempted to stop him for questioning. According to Ard, Steen fled the area. Ard pursued Steen in his police cruiser and attempted to fire a Taser weapon from the window of the moving cruiser.[1] The chase ended when Steen was struck by the cruiser and dragged until the cruiser came to a stop at a median in an empty parking lot.
29. (New Orleans) Unarmed, 20 yr. old Wendell Allen was shot in the chest and killed by an officer who arrived at a home with a narcotics warrant.
30. (Bensenhurst 1989) Unarmed, 16 yr. old Yusef Hawkins was shot and killed in a predominantly white working-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Hawkins and three friends were attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, with at least seven of them wielding baseball bats. One, armed with a handgun, shot Hawkins twice in the chest, killing him.
31. (Chicago 2011) Unarmed, 13 yr.old Jimmel Cannon was shot twice in the head, twice in the shoulder, and four in the legs. police arrived at a park near the Piccolo Specialty School where Jimmell attends to respond to a call of shots fired. They claim Jimmell matched the description of the shooter, so they came after him. He appeared to be holding a weapon in his hand, police say, and when they asked him to lower it, he refused. When he pointed the weapon in the officers’ direction, they opened fire. Apparently, eight rounds were required to subdue the 13-year-old. The weapon they allege he was holding was a BB gun, but the Fraternal Order of Police says that officers handled the situation correctly because toy guns and real ones can be indistinguishable even to trained police officers.
32. (San Fracisco 2011) Unarmed 19 yr. old Kenneth Harding
“Good luck son,” scratched off the roof of First Shirt’s throat as he impatiently waited for me to step outside of his red 1974 Cadillac with a blue pin stripe so madly thin it look liked God had keyed it. For the past two years he had been my and 500 fellow airmen’s head cock leading us home to roost. Every time, I saw his face I’d see Uncle Sam yelling, “I want you!” I decided that the man could have my body because I didn’t have a revolution within me anymore after my father had died and my mother had passed away. She isn’t dead. She happened to leave for 12 years and never return. But, now Uncle Sam no longer wanted to be my pimp. He said that his best paying customers, Lady Liberty and Madame Justice, were complaining that I was crazy and it affected my appearance in the ranks. My once pristine uniform and shiny boots had morphed into a worn potato chip bag with dragon fly stripes and boots that looked like they had been shined with a bar of “ I don’t give a shit no more.”
I was being kicked out for dereliction of duty; too much drinking off the job will put a strain on the Air Forces three core values: Excellence in All We Do, Integrity First, Service Before Self.
***
About 6 months prior, my demons who I thought I had left in North Dakota’s winter cold decided pay me a visit in Arizona summer heat with a script.
Two forty bottles of Old English Malt Liquor by mouth every evening at 1700 hrs.
They said that it would be the medicine I needed in order to find purpose in life. But, if I couldn’t bare living in my Black skin after consuming two forties they recommended me call Dr. Popov for a fifth of vodka. Most days after work I couldn’t bare living in my skin for six hours alone and then fall asleep only to end up boxing death with one short arm in my nightmares. But, it was a vicious cycle I ran in like a mouse in a hamster wheel. Every morning, it dawned on me that I had lost the rumble with the devil and woke up feeling like I had hit my head on the floor.
***
I stepped onto the boiling concrete into a puddle of sweat that had coagulated in the arch of my boot as First Shirt made his retreat. Fear cankered the inside of my mouth restricting words to shout, “Wait, help!” The taste of acid paraded rest on my tongue. It had been trained to swallow Uncle Sam’s metallic nuzzle for so long that I had lost the taste of pride. The door slammed shut and the Cadillac’s tires sadistically laughed at me, as I stood speechless.
“Now what?” I thought to myself.
While standing there inconveniently abandoned on Circle K’s front porch I decided it was a great day to go swimming in a couple bottles of alcohol. It was my way of passing time and surviving. I didn’t feel worthy for heaven or hell and the Air Force’s most valued core, “Service before self” had latched onto to me like an Ostomy Bag that I couldn’t shake off. I went inside the store and provided my script to the gas station pharmacist. I was given my only two friends I had left, two glass bottles with golden Jeannie’s bubbling and prepared to grant me my inebriated wishes. Everyone else had disappeared into last week’s tequila sunrise.
I walked outside and two police officers were talking to a homeless man sitting by a icebox and trash can that looked like it had threw up last nights garbage. The homeless man was drinking from a paper bag and held a sign that said, “War Vet Down On My Luck. God Bless America.” The irony aggressively poked the top of my stomach with anxiety forcing me to dry heave into the hot air. The police officers looked at me briefly and then went back to pestering the homeless man.
“Sir, what do you have in that paper bag?” one of the police officers interrogated the dingy old black man in Desert Storm fatigues and sandals.
“What the hell? Why are ya’ll always boverin’ me fo’? It’s water. Look! Take a sip if you want. It stays betta’ colder in a brown bag,” the old man responded.
The police officer grabbed the plastic bottle, twisted the top off, and snorted a sniff like a professional. His snorts caused me to force out the remainder of last night’s golden classic 40s. The police officer, annoyed, twisted the top half way back on, splashing most of it out on the pavement.
Handing the bottle to the homeless man, the police officer said, “Alright. Well, we’ve had complaints of loitering and you panhandling, so its time to go. Get up! Be on your way!” They lifted the old man onto his feet and he limped off the premises and across the street to the neighboring McDonalds.
Sweat baptized my forehead. I felt like I had been submerged in Jesus’ angst and fell 13 years backwards without a care in the world. Sometimes, new endings mark new beginnings, but I refused to be born again.
Fragments of life began to flake like dead skin in the dry heat ever since I landed in Phoenix. I had inherited my father’s broken legacy and joined the United State Air Force at 24 years old. For 22 years I watched my father be physically abused by Mrs. America and sexually exploited by Uncle Sam. It was all I knew as success. It was the American Nightmare camouflaged in the American Dream and it was all mine or so I thought.
* * *
A twenty-minute drive later, I walked up the stairs to my second floor apartment until a pink sheet pinned on the door stopped me half way. The letters, E.V.I.C.T.I.O.N were easy to read standing in what I thought was purgatory. However, it was no surprise, I had been waiting for the dreaded pink note since I hadn’t been able to pay rent and instead paid my car note. It was a difficult decision to choose between an apartment and a car. I figured it would be less room for my past to fit in my car so I paid my car note with my rent so I could have a place to sleep. At least until the repo man or death found me.
Each day forward I woke up to a daydream hanging from my rear-view mirror. I hydroplaned on sweat puddles from the Public Library to the Wal-Mart parking lot. I found reprieve from the through wandering dusty bookcases. I read books about the forgotten, the unwanted, and unforgiven. I read through the pages as if they were bars to prison cells and I was able to listen to their lives develop in the dark much like mine was blossoming from the rays of the moon. The best stories were those on death row because they didn’t have anything to win or lose, but share the truth of their thoughts and experiences moving closer to the door of eternity. They were finally able to be themselves.
Then when the library closed I went back home to my car. I would slowly walk, counting each step dreading the long night alone. It took me approximately 435 steps to reach my right front door. Then I’d drop down into my favorite love seat and drove from the library to the local gas station pharmacy to get my daily medication. After a few drinks, I would scratch marks into my skin to test the numbness I wished for. If it still hurt then I was able to drive to the local bar. If I was able feel the scratch and or saw a blood dancing on my skin then it was a night in at the Wal-Mart parking lot. Most often, I decided to spend my evenings in the local Wal-Mart parking lot. I didn’t sleep much, but I because my mind would start playing tricks on me. Loneliness would pick old scabs and I would remember painful stories from my childhood.
The Wal-Mart parking lot was my sanctuary. The Phoenix homeless shelters proved to be cemeteries filled with people who lived for the moment. The first night I tried to stay at a shelter someone was shot and killed. I decided to take the risk of sleeping in the trenches of public parks and benches to lessen the chance of losing my life with the rest of the forgotten.
Nightly, people walked their lives across my windshield. I imagined my windshield was a 40 -inch screen LSD television and I was watching reality television. As I took my sweat ridden t-shirt from the passenger seat I used it as a tourniquet for my right bicep. Then took my bottle of Popov Vodka to inject into my forearm as I began to reclined a burst of euphoria took my body hostage. Slowly my skin seeped into the tan drivers seat like a coffee stain. But before closing my eyes I was startled by the eyes that stared behind my reflection in the rearview mirror scrolled across the top of the windshield like a “Breaking News Alert.”
“What the hell am I doing with my life? God, what are you doing with me?”
I went into the United States Air Force born a Christian, but that first night living in my car I was baptized and confirmed a sinner.
My first night’s communion served over shot of holy vodka and bread that I took from the base chow hall. I wanted to save the bread as token of my last meal, but I was too hungry and buzzed to not eat. I knew that the bread would settle my first night jitters. A rustling came from the backseat. I looked behind in the back, but I didn’t find anything.
An auto-tuned voice came from the back seat. Computer Love by Zapp and Rogers came on.
“Ah shoot, that’s my jam,” I said aloud, picturing myself running onto the empty dance floor for a solo pop and lock routine.
Another noise came from behind. I looked into the backseat, but only an empty 40 bottle resting with a few empty water bottles.
“Damn this OE must gettin’ at me.”
I returned to watching the reality show developing in my car’s windshield. A white woman and man in their mid-20s were flirting and exchanging bad first date jokes.
Then I heard, “You know you’re better than this.”
“Huh? Who is that? Stop fucking around and get out of my car.”
I didn’t know if it was the OE talking or someone was in my car. I paused the bad first date reality and looked back and again nothing was there. Then I looked forward to press play and then I saw his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I see you,” he said.
“Oh shnap!”
A fractured frame of a man’s face reflected in my rearview mirror.
“Yeah, but I can’t see you and when I do I am going to take this bottle upside yo’ head.”
“Don’t look back here. If, you do I’ll have to leave.”
I looked closer in the rearview mirror to see a familiar face. Then I moved even closer to the reflection and I saw the wires and tubes from his body like the day I made the decision to take him off of life support.
“Dad, is that you?”
“What do you think? Does it look like me?”
“Yes,” I nervously replied.
“Well…,” he grumbled.
I paused for a few moments.
“I’m sorry for hanging up on you our last conversation and not saying, “Good bye.”
“ Whoa, boy let’s not go there. The past is the past. Let’s deal with now. Tell me why you are here, in this car,” he said looking around the car in disgust, “Dang boy, what’s that smell. It stinks.”
Embarrassed I replied,” Sorry, Circle K hand soap isn’t the best to wash up with. And if I knew you were coming, I would have cleaned up a little bit more.”
“Stop saying, you’re sorry. When’d you start drinking? Don’t answer that I know when you started drinking. You know what it did to me. I didn’t raise you to be like this. Anyways, back to why you ‘re here,Why are you here?”
“I’ve been asking myself that for minute. Lost myself once you left. Joined the military to find myself. Lost myself again after everyone seemed to die all at once. Did you know Uncle Stanely got murdered? I heard some kids that it would be funny to kill the old homeless man in the alley. After all that death I just don’t see life the same anymore.”
“Because I’m dead and gone? Do I look dead or gone?”
I hesitated in answering because my father always could tell when I was lying.
“The truth? Yes. Yes you do look dead and you have been gone for a long time. Why’d you leave us with nothing?”
With a stern look he interrupted, “What did I say? How many times did I tell ya’ll I wasn’t going to be around forever?”
“Too many times. Shit. I mean, sometimes I thought you’d rather be dead than alive with us. You said it so much I figured God finally answered your prayer. Not that I blame you. This world is all fucked up and all you did was work.”
He raised his eyebrows to suggest I should edit my language.
“Sor…, I mean I apologize. But, why do we have to fuckin… I mean why do we have to live like this in order to survive? We too damn busy trying to survive we can’t build shit for our children to have. Nothing is ever easy.”
“What’s your excuse for dying? Locking yourself up in this car like a coffin? Livin’ in in this coffin is no way to live. Shoot, dead in a coffin is hard enough. I had to leave. God called me on home. Plus, my body couldn’t hang no longer. Looked too much like strange fruit. And both Black and White folks were pickin’at me. But, look at you. You’re still here after all that has happened.”
Laughter interrupted from the couple proceeded on their date interrupted us.
“Look at them, all smilin’ and laughin’ at life. While we fight to simply survive. It’s a war out here, dad. It’s kill or be killed. And I don’t know how much longer I can handle being beat up, shot, and reborn. The vultures make their rounds, circling the ghetto in my head. And sometimes I feel like just being eaten.”
My father sat in disbelief. It was hard to see him deflated, but I couldn’t lie to him or myself any longer.
Warfare is imminent in the daily life of a Homeless Black Street Scholar. I could deconstruct this label however I would be using the master’s tools to translate a narrative that is not my own. The oppressor does not like the words like “war” or “fair.” He believes it signifies me as the enemy or a domestic terrorist. However, my life, like the american Black body, has been commodified similarly in the manner the 17th century enslaved African. There is no difference between the enslaved African and enslaved African American narrative. The lines of history are one and continue to evolve by the illustration of White supremacy. I have learned through formal and informal education to look at myself in a mirror and hate myself. The late Black poet, Amiria Barak, wrote in his poem;
An Agony. As Now.
BY AMIRI BARAKA
I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women.
The leaders of the Free World control the building, destruction, and reconstructions disguised its in institutions in the complex yet irrational logical schemes. I repeat, the Black body is perceived to be a domestic terrorist. Public Enemy #1. Blackness is the enemy. But, the evil is accepted in broad day ight. There is constant vigilance that the privileged are able to call, “hyper-vigilant.” But, to a person who is constantly aware of the potential dangers and risks that Black and Brown bodies have to address it isn’t being hyper vigilant or sub human as they would believe, but its being simply vigilante because that’s they have been taught from a very young age in order to survive. The moment Black and Brown bodies are introduced to white America through its child-like strategies, the education system; Black and Brown parents have to prepare their children for the worst. They would like to be as Ervin Goffman characterizes as “normal” in his essay Stigma. But, parents of color know the mental warfare their children have to face from Pre-school to 12th grade. They teach their children modes of resistance; resisting to be generalized, resisting from being ignored, resisting from being silent, and resisting to be injected into the school to prison pipeline.
“Ana, I was wondering, how do you find the time to be both a mother and an artist?” asks a woman who laces her questions with a confession of maternal guilt disclosing her inability to find an appropriate amount of time to be a professor and a good mother to her two children.
Ana Tijoux, Arizona State University Performance in the Border/Land’s guest and Chilean Hip Hop female MC, responds, “Do you ask men that same question?” Her question ruffles the congested audiences feathers as they all are stunned by Ana Tijoux’s reaction. She continues, “I am sorry it’s not attack against you, but that is what I ask journalist when they ask me that same question. I am a mother. I do what I have to do. But, I never see people ask male MCs the same question, “How do you be a father and an artist?”
On Wednesday, October 15, 2014, I attended a panel with Ana Tijoux, Dr. Nia Witherspoon, Dr. Mako Fitts-Ward, and Dorra Areola. The panel was contrived of female artists, scholars to pose questions and answers with Ana Tijoux on politics, feminism, and the power of music to inspire a political shift. I often ask Hip-hop, “Where are you headed?” When I view the globalization of Hip-hop I am reminded of commodification of enslaved Africans swept up in the Atlantic Slave Trade forced to move through time and places like Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States of America. It seems looking back in history no matter what White America thought of Black folks previously they have stole and sold it; Black bodies, art, fashion, music, and literature.
The late Griot, Amiri Barak once said, “The future is always here in the past.” The New Black America is caught in the contrapuntal narrative. It is neither here nor there because what it means to be Black has been created, cultivated, and shared through the contrapuntal narrative. Even though Hip-hop is known for being born out of the despair and celebration of people’s survival in the Black experience in the 1970’s its five elements; MCing, Beatboxing, B Boying/ B Girling, Graffiti, and Knowledge. Hip-hop was first conceived on the waves of capitalism’s Atlantic Slave Trade and the African Diaspora, including the four major migrations of African and Black folks in America.
The current migration of Black America is illustrated in the contrapuntal narrative Hip-hop dressed in Afrofuturism. I believe Hip-hop is an Afrofuturistic agent that combines all the aforementioned elements with an Afrofuturistic language that has the ability transform and uniting the identity of tomorrow’s Blackness with the it’s history present African Diaspora. Ana Tijoux is one of many Hip-hop prophets telling a story of hope and retribution in all shades and bodies of Blackness. As long as Hip-hop continues in the hands of MCs like Ana Tijoux the voice of the Black experience will be in the words, for all true Hip-hop disciples know, “It is not where you’re from, but where you at.”
Words with Black Yoda 