MULTIPRONGED APPROACH TO REVOLUTION
Everybody doesn’t play the same role in revolution. If you look at any uprising in history, whether it be the Civil Rights movement, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, or the abolitionist movement, the issues were addressed and attacked via various means. In designing the crest for Smart Funny & Black’s logo, I wanted to represent this multipronged approach via our “fams.”
• Rebel Fam: “We Fight.” The image of the black panther holding Africa with a black fist donning an RBG wristband represents the physical force needed to challenge oppression. I do not promote violence, but I do promote defense, and when your people are being assaulted and slaughtered, there has to be muscle on your side of the field to defend them.
• Woke Fam: “We Read.” The Ancient Egyptian holding the stack of books speaks to the importance of education in the fight for liberation. The first thing oppressors do is suppress language and education. When people can’t communicate or read, it limits not only their confidence and intelligence but also their ability to organize an uprising. Black folks, never forget, they didn’t want us to read. Simply by consuming literature we are our ancestor’s dream and our oppressor’s worst nightmare.
• Cultcha Fam: “We Vibe.” The boom box paired with the pencil, microphone, and paintbrush represent the importance art plays in revolution. Historians may record the facts of the time, but artists record the feelings. We simultaneously create art for educating others and beautiful works that can be a welcome momentary distraction from the hectic state of an injustice-filled world and an idea-filled mind.
• Fly Fam: “We Fly.” The three faces represent different elements of iconic black style, from Dwayne Wayne’s flip glasses and flattop to the young woman’s head wrap and septum ring to homie’s locs and “Beard Gang” beard. They speak to the history of black innovation, the role style has always played in defining our culture and defying our oppressors, and the need to always be creating new approaches, new strategies, and new inroads to making better lives for those who don’t benefit from the privilege afforded others.
HOW THINGS ARE vs. HOW THEY COULD BE
You can alleviate a lot of unnecessary stress by taking an objective look at the world and acknowledging the fact that YES, it is shitty, but considering and being the change toward the ways it could work.
IGNORANCE AND BLISS
Ignorance is not bliss . . . but ignorance of other people’s ignorance is!
GEM DROPPIN’
Conscious vs. Trolltep
IN A WORLD THAT HAS MADE CONCERTED EFFORTS to keep black folks ignorant to our greatness, the systems in place to oppress that greatness, and the ability to topple those systems, being aware, empowered, and informed is key to the goal of achieving any semblance of true freedom. Or as the kids say, being “woke.” Whether you’re about being up on your reading, or being involved in the community, or simply exhibiting black pride in the face of scrutiny, there are many levels of wokeness. Although there are many folks doing work on the ground, this wokeness can most easily be seen super clearly on the interwebs. These innanets and its various platforms have become an open forum for folks who have thoughts, ideas, principles, and ideals that they want to share with the world, or with their twenty-three followers. Amidst this varied array of individuals are everyday people sick and tired of being sick and tired, coons who would sell their own family to the slave ship if the gold was right, self-proclaimed leaders, subversive speakers, actor/athlete activists, educators, and all the rest of us. Though these platforms have provided an incredible resource for information gathering, and sharing, with the intention of empowerment, on occasion they have been the incubator for folks with plentiful information yet limited insight. In an effort to prevent purpose and progress from being derailed, identifying who’s ’bout it and who’s ’bout the bullshit is imperative.
“Ignorance is bliss” is a crock of crap. Especially if you’re a person of color. ESPECIALLY if you are a black person. If you identify as black, and are a member of the black community, blissful ignorance can get you killed, or even worse, labeled a coon! I kid, I kid. Being a coon is absolutely not worse than being killed but as a coon, your support of oppressive ideals and legislation kills not only others, but your access to your black card as well. Thankfully, these days it’s become cool to be tapped in. Folks complain about IG THOTs, mumble rappers, excessive video games, and do hella shock value violent music videos that permeate the pop culture space, boldly suggesting that, consumed with the latest dance craze to take over, black Americans have become desensitized to black violence. The same folks then sit back and watch their point proven as the same pop-culture-consuming black folks they are complaining about permeate the pop culture space with the images of the black violence found in the video chiding them for becoming desensitized to images of black violence! But it does nothing to advance the conversation!
Everyone has an opinion. The facts, however, are that many conversations are happening in many settings, from many entry points, about change and solutions as they relate to blackness in America. To be conscious is to be a part of these conversations, even if just as a passive listener and supporter. The dissemination of information is a valuable role in any revolution for change that uplifts the “common” masses and does not require you to be the speaker, but more the seeker of truth and fact; and the sharer of your discoveries with others. True consciousness also requires objectivity and a heightened level of realism. There is how we want things to be, how things were, and how things are. In order to achieve any real change, you have to be able to see things clearly on all of these fronts from your own perspective and consider other perspectives as well.
Hoteps ain’t bout that life. Hotep is an ancient Egyptian word that means “be at peace.” In current black social circles, it is the name given to those who disrupt the “peace” with extreme and evangelical-level concepts of black consciousness. However, they are the unconsciously conscious. The sleepwoke. They are SO woke, they are suffering from sleep deprivation that has them thinking delusionally. A bigger issue, aside from their own disconnect from true positive movements, is that hoteps attack and demean others who don’t agree with their problematic insights. Hence my creation of the term trollteps aka hoteps who troll. Then again, one could argue that the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and by nature, a hotep is trolling the black community. They are unwaveringly homophobic, they attempt to demean women who unabashedly speak their point of view or challenge the toxic masculinity behaviors by black men, and they have a very limited scope in what they consider the true black experience to be and who should be able to speak to it and about it. To trollteps, black women with blond hair are trying to “mimmick massa,” even though there are indigenous black people the world over who have naturally blond hair. To trollteps, the voices of gay men, women, and the trans community are of no value because based on Dr. So-and-So’s and/or Brother What’s-His-Name’s teachings they have deemed their sexual orientation an abomination of blackness. To trollteps, ANY woman’s challenge to or critiquing of black men for literally any reason whatsoever is an action in partnership with the oppressor. I could go on and on with the BS that these folks drum up and push out. The spotting of a hotep, or a trolltep, or a hotep notep (another term I’ve created for these fools) can be a doozy. As Joelle learned in season two of Dear White People, at first they present as intellectuals who are loving of blackness. Who wouldn’t find that endearing? Buuutttt, eventually, they whip out a kufi and some egregious ignorance, and their true selves are revealed as the detriment of their sentiments are made clear. Don’t even try to argue. You’re speaking rationally into an irrational “The black woman is queen . . . But I am king and should be regarded as such” void. The point is, they’re not welcome. Even if their intention is in the empowerment and forward movement of black folks, their rhetoric is grounded in a flawed foundation that upholds patriarchal principles, presents invalid opinion as fact, and is more
about ego and dominance than understanding and unity.
The incessant work that has been done for centuries by oppressive forces to brainwash black folks into upholding the supremacist structures that oppress us is on a maniacal level. We, as a community who recognizes this, must work on a constant basis to not only prevent any further brainwashing, but also work to reverse the result of that which has already taken place. It takes mental and emotional stamina and support from each other. It takes gender equality and respecting freedom of sexual choice. It involves intense insight into self and simultaneous ownership of the wellness of your community. The goal is not to merely survive, but to thrive and to encourage each other to do so beyond the confines of what we’ve been told is possible. We defy them with our excellence and an indifference to their existence. We cannot base how we as a black community operate on the infrastructures of our oppressor. There is no merit to or ethics in their design, which is why I am a big believer that you must call out coons, Uncle Toms, and house negros who push and support agendas that seek to continue the narrative that “white is right.” However, trollteps, in effect, and sometimes inadvertently, push that narrative, in presenting their arguments and attacking fellow black folks in the same ways as the oppressors they claim to work toward toppling. In their inability to properly differentiate between coons and black folks who simply do not share their extremism, they widen the chasm within the black community created by the Colonial and Willie Lynch methods of divide and conquer. In seeking to silence sistas who speak to wellness, accountability, and individual freedom amongst black men and women, they do no more than carry forth a reductive narrative that positions black women as existing solely for the purposes of service, seed bearing, and silence. Nah.
We have borne the mask that grins and lies, and life still ain’t no crystal stair, but we stand on the shoulders of giants who have come before us. To be conscious is to understand that we are carrying forth the vision of those who somehow survived slave holds in the shit-filled gut of devil-run ships, those who woke up and put their best ties and kitten heels on to face individuals who threw their worst insults and fists and water hoses at them simply for wanting the right to share the same lunch counter, those who defied the threat of death, simply to learn how to read a language that was denied them, after having their mother tongue beaten out of their consciousness, those who signed their names to petitions that could prevent their families from eating, in the hopes that it would one day allow their family’s family to prosper, those who reimagine incarceration as rehabilitation, those who put down their colors to come together in community, didn’t take no for an answer, who dared to envision a world where they could see their vision through to fruition, who somehow tapped into the resource within their DNA that extends all the way way way back to when black people of the earth created and thrived in civilizations that are still giving to this world. Hoteps disrupt that legacy when they interrupt with patriarchy, misogyny, homo/transphobia, and more, which does not uplift but instead emboldens fear. As Dap screams at the end of School Daze, WAAAKKKKKEEEE UPPPPPP! to knowing, upholding, and no longer denying that we are more powerful as an US.
A Seat at the Table
THAT ONE TIME
“I’m not hostile. I’m just passionate.” That’s what I told Caitlyn Jenner as she sat across from me, in the randomest of settings, her red-nail-polished fingertips clasped in indignation during a YouTube livestreamed dinner hosted by Katy Perry. The gathering, a part of Katy’s seventy-two-hour “Big Brother House,” done in promotion of her (then) new album, Witness, was coordinated to bring a diverse group of minds together, including Van Jones (CNN), Ana Navarro (The View), Sally Kohn (CNN), Yung Skeeter (DJ), Caitlyn Jenner (American TV personality), Margaret Cho (comedian), Derek Blasberg (writer, Vanity Fair), and myself, Amanda Seales (comedian/HBO’s Insecure). The mix of guests was meant to encourage the importance of having difficult conversations with people you may respect, but with whom you have diverging and very disparate views. It lived up to expectations. The dinner conversation quickly evolved into discourse, and Caitlyn became bristled by statements I made regarding the current president’s proclivity for tyrannical behavior. With urging, she expounded upon her offense at my statements, saying that she “loves this country.” When I began to candidly, yet courteously, inform her about how her white privilege creates the lens through which she views America, versus how I, a black woman, view it, shit got real. Everyone could feel it. Everybody knew it. A “moment” was happening.
“Moments” like that, where unfiltered truths are cast against unwavering ignorance like opposing spells from the wands of Dumbledore and Voldemort, have happened at a number of dinner tables since the 2016 election. When they do, they force everyone to play a role in whether the conversation will be an effective one. Our table was no different.
There were Sally Kohn and Katy Perry in the roles of The Listener: It’s the safest and oftentimes most courteous position to play. Especially if you’re a white person and a black person is speaking about their black experience.
You had Van Jones, The Moderator: I often found myself side-eying him, but that night he was vital in clearing up miscommunications, providing clarity to confusion, and, overall, encouraging all parties to be respectful, even in the midst of horseshit being spewed.
Gotta love Margaret Cho and Yung Skeeter, The Allies: May not have said much, but their demeanor and disposition read, “SPEAK YOUR TRUTH!” Margaret’s grin as I was breaking it down to CJ was like that of a proud mom watching her kid finally confront their bully. Which is the kind of encouragement you need when you’re up against . . .
The Obstructionist: In this case, that was Caitlyn. The person at the table choosing to disengage when the discussion becomes difficult, willfully ignoring facts that are counter to their point, and thus misdirecting conversation from progressive to regressive based on cognitive dissonance, misinformation, and ego, or all of the above.
Lastly, there was me, The Truth Teller: The person armed with the information, the honesty, and the tenacity to speak directly to the heart of the issue and educate those involved, while inspiring those in earshot. After the clip of what I now call “The Caitlyn Clinic” went viral, several people asked me, “Do you think she heard you?” My response was, “I don’t care.” More importantly, who did hear me were hella black folks that felt empowered by the authenticity of our experience being represented.
It may not be livestreaming, but currently, we’re all at one big dinner table called America. And though there may not be a right side of the table, as the makers of the media that not only changes minds but can change the world, we must remember there is a right side of history. What role will the work you do play in the conversation to make sure we land on it?
* A verbal assault that involves no curse words and takes out the opponent using words and syntax that is so precise and elevated it renders them defenseless.
† A woman once told me she hated this question because when she would answer truthfully with “washed my hair,” it required an entire explanation. She eventually resorted to just saying, “Nothing much,” and keeping it moving. LOL.
* Over time, “woke” has been somewhat “all lives mattered” into an awareness for all, and somewhat gentrified into an awareness for anything. Initially it referred to black folks who aren’t enslaved mentally, understand how injustices function today, and who choose to use their voice to against these injustices.
CHAPTER 3
Square Biz
Thriving in Your Career & Getting That Paper
IN TRYING TO MAKE THE MOST OF OUR TIME HERE on the pale blue dot, some of us are doing a whole lotta BS and tryna make it look like something. Whether it’s stuntin’ on the ’gram while sleeping on your momma’s couch or posting every open bar you attend every night of every week. (Sidenote: You could be an alcoholic. Don’t let the social settings fool you!) For the most part, we’re simply out here tryna get it how we live it, and thou
gh we don’t want to be used, we do want to be useful. Many of us define our usefulness by our work. We chart how much we are adding to society by what we do to make money. We solidify our purpose via the level of work we produce and how it affects the world. That said, getting your mind right and then your money right are two of the most basic fundamentals of life. Ideally, you want to do the former first because when you get your money right, you want to be able to enjoy it. As B.I.G. said, “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems,” and you’ll want a solid mental base that feels connected, from the Coogi down to the socks, to tackle the trials as they come . . . and they will come.
There really is no easy road to the alignment of your professional goals with your heart. With one side rooted in logic and the other rooted in emotion, it takes time and clarity of thought to get the two to work in tandem. That is the process. Within that process there are various stages and developments that seem insurmountable as they’re happening, but in hindsight prove to have been requisite elements to your eventual ascent to “shinin’ on deez hoes.” Speaking for myself as a creative, defining your style, your process, and yourself are paths that will try your whole entire patience at the same time they are shaping you into a creative who is on “a grind” versus just “a hustle.”
Now, if you’re a multihyphenate, there’s also a whole other level of clarity you have to find. Often this clarity is not even for yourself, but for others—for a world that wants to label you—and that can be a confounding space. Bringing your creativity to commerce and corporate America takes some finesse and self-awareness as both operate as their own institutions with their own sets of spoken and unspoken rules. Often, there is no blueprint for either, but there are subtle intricacies and inconspicuous techniques for managing both. As a creative, life can simply feel unmanageable. However, it doesn’t have to be. When you do begin to ascend, there are moves to be made to keep the momentum in an upward trajectory. However, if that momentum hits a wall, you gotta find ways to Aaliyah and DMX it and “Dust yaself off and try again . . . try again.” In the midst of all that, staying focused on the ways you can support yourself financially and, hopefully, fulfillingly, is probably the toughest part.
Small Doses Page 9
