"The Culture of Cruelty"

“The Culture of Cruelty”

I first found the article eye opening both to what some young boys and girls go through in the sweat of emotional development. 

There are so many differences not only between men and women, but between free and non-free peoples.  The giant leap into manhood, a leap filled with the potency of hope, shares the podium with a mound of other debilitating dilemmas that pay homage to a dangerous attraction - the mask of cruelty, which like cinema leaves its images trampled on the cutting board floor.

W.E.B. DuBois makes us aware of a “two-ness” when it comes to African Americans.  A double social identity, one lodged in the dominant White culture, the other found in the Black culture.  In one respect that “two-ness” is a conflicting identity that is familiar with what is necessary for survival in a dominant society of whites, but is also is trying to keep an African identity.  Assimilation is necessary for survival in this country, so here is a young boy who must negotiate his way through the valley of “The Culture of Cruelty” which necessitates more than an acquaintance with the dominant male image and autonomy, he must also understand survival demands he learn to “drop his eyelids” when challenged by Whites and in spite of everything, find a place where he is considered a man and yet be called by his name.

It is stated in the article, “Among themselves boys engage in continuous psychological warfare… creating an environment that pits the strong against the weak, …the power brokers against the powerless, and the conformity-driven “boy pack” against the boy who fails in any way to conform with pack expectations.”  My question lies in a murky area somewhere – if in fact the end result is institutionally to never be allowed acceptance even if the behavior a boy exhibits really does conform, the dangling carrot becomes the “boy pack” that he will never be  accepted into.  How then does that affect his position/status and where does that leave him within the culture structure he is trying so desperately to negotiate position?

I seriously wonder if “boys urinating on other boy’s belongings stemmed in simple “boy behavior”, or if it was a racial prank would a Black child’s reaction be racially motivated, or could that child ever see these pranks as simply “boy culture”.

“Boys who are under constant pressure to assert power or be labeled a weakling are more likely to level cruelty at others with little recognition of, or regard for, its emotional impact.  Boys are cruel, in part because they are afraid, and their need to defend against that fear is ironclad.”    Have we in this instance found the reason for physical abuse towards women or does this power assertion also turn on itself towards other men?  And if this is the case, can we accept this type of explanation for crime against women and is crime culturally and racially more evenly distributed now?  Does this window of understanding allow us to slacken our intolerance on crimes against women and children?  If striving for masculinity and equality lends itself to more pain perhaps we should be rethinking our cultural norms and becoming more intolerant no matter the cost.         

Responsibility

Assignment # 13

Responsibility

I believe in the old adage, "it takes a village to raise a child".  I really believe that it is true and that many of us would rather be absolved from any responsibility to anyone else including matters that challenge our thoughts and/or our actions.  While viewing the documentary about women in hip hop it was alarming to me that a female felt distance was the best way to handle someone else’s children when it came to responsibility – “if you don’t like what you see and hear turn it off, monitor your children, it is not my responsibility!”  I suppose I was floored because of my traditional thinking, a female should care about children theirs and others; I have since learned that my thinking is obsolete, and women no longer care about a neighbors child as it was back in the 50s and 60s. 

      Because of their own unresolved disgruntlements and disintegrated lifestyles our children suffer the consequences.  Hip-hop music attached to distorted sex has become a heat seeking missile with its target being children.  Why seek children – they are the most vulnerable, most able to soak in a message, our children have Columbine minds – the entertainment industry values that.  There are those of us who care about the fall-out, but often times the ones who are creating the image of this music really do not care, at least not about children who are not theirs.

            There are many different situations where role models unselfishly identify with those it models to.  For instance, during the 1960s Black athletes raised fists at the Olympic Games, an intense surge of power, respect, and representation was witnessed by the world.  We were in turbulent times in this country, times when Blacks were struggling for equal rights and recognition, a place of cultural significance.  So, the athletes carried the burden and the responsibility of the message to white America:  “We are intelligent, we are athletic, we are capable, we are not here to burn your town down or to be offensive, but we are here to exercise our craft.  Furthermore, we’re bearing the responsibility for all of those millions of other black people who will never get a chance to come to your television or be seen on your large screen, or on your local gridiron” (Open Mike – Michael E. Dyson 208.)   Today the higher profile our stars foster, the more demands they face, the more they turn a head towards the sky and move towards the idealism of middle class living (crass materialism) without challenging their ethical mind zones which had moved away from the people they claim to represent.

            This “bling – bling” culture has fallen in love with its own reflection throwing out traditional values and opening doors for glorified violence –the consequences of which are fatal for our children.  However, in all of those who are detrimental in their genre, there are those who are truly gifted poets who are addressing more than sexual prowess, deep pockets and other crass materialism that is leaving our children bleeding to death on both urban and suburban streets.    

As Tupac’s lyrics say, “Somebody help me.  Tell me where to go from here.  Cause even thugs cry.  But do the Lord care?”         

                       

Blogging

            Blogging has been a relief for me, as I am a rather painfully shy person, blogging has given a way of communication that was not available to me before this class.  I have found myself fascinated with the voyeuristic side of blogging and peering into my peers’ thoughts, their hopes, dreams, and dislikes helps me to see people more realistically.  My sometimes bourgeois thoughts don’t get off the ground when I read someone’s realistic opinion then there are other times when I would want to say, “don’t believe the hype”. 

            The other thing this blogging has given to me is respect for my own opinions, to stand behind them whether they are quirky, senseless, or profound.  I am learning to trust what I think, though I am sure that I will continue to grow and change, for this moment I am learning to honor my thoughts and others’ thoughts.

            Blogging has also taught me the scholarship of other students and what is required of one who wants to learn.  Though no one was filled to the brim with negativism, I believe people taught me by honestly critiquing my work.  They gave me deeper things to think on and different ways of looking at situations.  I really think my classmates are brilliant and thoughtful people who are intellectually free and who reflect critically on social and spiritual issues. 

            Somehow in this environment I have even noticed my thoughts are becoming more logical and my understanding of simple literature concepts are becoming clearer.  I consider this the textural part of my education now.  This part is the something I can feel, the substance of my education.  I have tasted the good and the bad and it is laying a wonderful foundation within me these teachings are combining to create a rich impression that will carry me through the balance of my education.

Language

Is where I have learned to hide my mountainous thoughts

Where I dress myself daily with vocabulary that I am not well acquainted with

And it is where I preen before the mirror of me

Wearing frocks of lingo that are enclosed with fire, I look noble neither nesting on guilt or shame

Someplace where thought is more than an acquaintance

But is a real companion

A lover of what he said, and what she said, and what she said too

Mary Joyce Franklin

            “Your silence

Will not

            Protect you”

Some of us—

We dumb autistic ones,

The aphasics,

Those who can only stutter

Or point,

Some who speak in tongues,

Or write in invisible ink—

Sit rigid, our eyelids burning

Mute

From birth

From fear

From habit

For love and money

For children

For fear for fear

While you probe

Our agonized silence,

A constant pain:

            Dear Eshu’s Audre,

            Please keep on

            Teaching us

            How

To speak,

            To know

            That now

            “our labor is

            More important than

            Our silence.”

Gloria T. Hull for Audre Lorde

            Blogging has given me a way to destroy the fear and silence in me.  I will be forever grateful.

     

responsibility

Assignment # 13

Responsibility

I believe in the old adage, "it takes a village to raise a child".  I really believe that it is true and that many of us would rather be absolved from any responsibility to anyone else including matters that challenge our thoughts and/or our actions.  While viewing the documentary about women in hip hop it was alarming to me that a female felt distance was the best way to handle someone else’s children when it came to responsibility – “if you don’t like what you see and hear turn it off, monitor your children, it is not my responsibility!”  I suppose I was floored because of my traditional thinking, a female should care about children theirs and others; I have since learned that my thinking is obsolete, and women no longer care about a neighbors child as it was back in the 50s and 60s. 

      Because of their own unresolved disgruntlements and disintegrated lifestyles our children suffer the consequences.  Hip-hop music attached to distorted sex has become a heat seeking missile with its target being children.  Why seek children – they are the most vulnerable, most able to soak in a message, our children have Columbine minds – the entertainment industry values that.  There are those of us who care about the fall-out, but often times the ones who are creating the image of this music really do not care, at least not about children who are not theirs.

            There are many different situations where role models unselfishly identify with those it models to.  For instance, during the 1960s Black athletes raised fists at the Olympic Games, an intense surge of power, respect, and representation was witnessed by the world.  We were in turbulent times in this country, times when Blacks were struggling for equal rights and recognition, a place of cultural significance.  So, the athletes carried the burden and the responsibility of the message to white America:  “We are intelligent, we are athletic, we are capable, we are not here to burn your town down or to be offensive, but we are here to exercise our craft.  Furthermore, we’re bearing the responsibility for all of those millions of other black people who will never get a chance to come to your television or be seen on your large screen, or on your local gridiron” (Open Mike – Michael E. Dyson 208.)   Today the higher profile our stars foster, the more demands they face, the more they turn a head towards the sky and move towards the idealism of middle class living (crass materialism) without challenging their ethical mind zones which had moved away from the people they claim to represent.

            This “bling – bling” culture has fallen in love with its own reflection throwing out traditional values and opening doors for glorified violence –the consequences of which are fatal for our children.  However, in all of those who are detrimental in their genre, there are those who are truly gifted poets who are addressing more than sexual prowess, deep pockets and other crass materialism that is leaving our children bleeding to death on both urban and suburban streets.    

As Tupac’s lyrics say, “Somebody help me.  Tell me where to go from here.  Cause even thugs cry.  But do the Lord care?”         

                       

ROCAWEAR

ROCAWEAR

Essence Magazine

            Was I floored, yes I was!  “My grandfather was a professor, my mother is a forensic scientist, I AM NEXT.”  The advertisement in and of itself was wonderful.  I found the advertisement in Essence Magazine, which is a magnet for Black women or women in general.  However, what I found within the advertisement itself was quite disheartening. 

            First, I noticed this ad for Rocawear was a two page advertisement.  The ad was filled with what most readers would associate with men, a desk, a lamp, a computer and keyboard, file drawers, a scientific formula on the board, more filing cabinets and what looks like some sort of carrying case.  There was also a stool for sitting and rolled up scientific plans on the floor (you know the disheveled look).  There was an electric fan (which is used as an emblem of kingship in Africa), and a beautiful little boy with a jacket on, some cute jeans, a shirt, and tennis shoes.  He is standing with his jacket open in a position of authority all of which is wonderful that is if a little girl was not sitting on an ironing table one page away.

            Her ad “My grandmother was a seamstress, my mother is a fashion designer, I AM NEXT.”  Her ad was a one page ad again for Rocawear in comparison to the male ad.  Her room does not have a computer, but it is filled with mannequins, a sewing machine with a small overhead lamp over it, a tape measure, a cutting board, an iron, lots of bolts of material, not even one pattern is shown (I guess that would have been too complicated for a female). 

            Where as the young man had no intention of removing his jacket (position of power), the little girl is seated on an ironing or cutting board, removing her jacket, the idea is very adult, there are women who find themselves in this position often – on a table disrobing. Where did the imagination go when it came to the ad for the little girl?  Or is it the same old clichéd situation between male and female advertisement, women really don’t need much, are not accomplished, and do not aspire to be.  It was pretty amazing that in the little girl’s work environment, there was no computer to be found.  Fashion designers make there own designs, their own patterns, showcase their own creativity, I saw no drawing boards for her, no filing cabinets and nothing to keep records with.  Where were her clients?  Who does she buy and sell to?  We seem not to have a problem with our imagination when it comes to males, but we run short when it comes to females.  Do I know that it is difficult to become a fashion designer, sure I do.  Do I know that there is nothing wrong with that aspiration – yes I know it!  However, Essence is a magazine that is geared to the uplifting of women, and how is that possible when the advertisement being used is male biased?  Does it cost to run a magazine, damned right it does?  Can we do a better job by being more sensitive to the needs of Black women – yes we can!  Do I not want our Black male children to succeed, absolutely I do, but this is a magazine for females.  Not only should we see non-traditional careers for women, but hope for our daughters as well.  The subtlety of it all is quite amazing, “my grandmother was a seamstress”, for what white woman?  I personally don’t want to see a big black iron (an emblem for too many Black women’s pain) plastered big as life on the page.  So, we go from seamstress, to fashion designer why not at least fashion house owner?   I know Rocawear is owned and operated by African Americans, but Rocawear for men shows its power, for women they are sadly lacking.           

Essence.com

            It is true that as technology takes this world into unfathomable places there are other places that are painfully developmentally delayed.  One of those delays is lack of fresh treatment of both women and men in messages from media. 

            Men still have the positive message of strength, roughness, toughness, fearlessness, decisiveness, a man of action.  Women for the most part (unless a special part is written for her as heroine) weak, indecisive, confused, ditzy, a wife, mother, girlfriend, sticks by her man, a toy, an object, sexy, wild, brainless, person who has babies.  She is often times made by men to please men, “Tell me you like me, you don’t have to mean it!” 

            These are still some of the roles we are fighting to outrun today.  If we look at the “hip Hop” generation and their videos, until recently most of them were “girls” dressed provocatively, and scantily, with no more than a role in the DVDs to stand wide legged, with their breasts showing, and behind hanging out.  Oh, don’t forget the gyrating all over everywhere.  So if this is meant to titillate, then who – you guessed right men! 

            There is no envy or flat out jealousy of men and their manhood, it is the privilege they have acquired for themselves at the expense and sometimes on the backs of women that has become such a stench in the 21 Century’s nostrils.  There were women from the 20^th Century who worked tirelessly for women’s rights, thereby gaining a new scale for men to ride upon, but it has met with heavy artillery from Left Wingers who do not believe women should work, or if she does it should only be as a secondary income to her husband’s because “we are still on the make a baby, stay home dribble”.  Women who were and still are by their legacy, Barbara Jordan a U.S. Congresswoman, Pauli Murray who was an attorney, priest and civil rights activist are seldom heard of in our world today, Lilian Welsh and Mary Sherwood both medical doctors and life partners, were instrumentally helpful in the women’s movement.      

     Stubbornly, in 1933 New York Times Magazine article said that “The College Girl Puts Marriage First” and quoted young women who said “most of us would chuck everything for marriage”, in 1980 “Many Young Women Now Say They’d Pick Family over Career,” A poll was taken of over 3,000 college students in which 77% of the women and 84% of men said they believed that mothers should not work with small children.  But in reality by 1998 46% of working age women was employed.  The more success women found in the 1980s and the 1990s the more articles were written about how women really could not have it all and showed women who had joyously given up high powered executive employment.

            Women are often found as objects and their bodies are objectified for TV and movies, even commercials.  If we look at Popeye and Olive Oyl we find Olive being treated as an object by both Pop Eye and Pluto while she is being pulled both ways all she ever does is moan and wail, she never decides who she wants, she always goes with whoever wins in the fight.  I do say the fight is never really about Olive Oyl, but it is about two men who are competing, might as well be a hunting match. 

            Where do we go from here – we should begin to look at our local newspaper and find ways in which women are given a back seat and complain about it.  We need to become much more vocal and air our grievances with media even our schools so that we begin to treat our children fairly.  I believe it is time we grew up and faced whatever consequences may come and run not walk run to the nearest hope and shout!      

Caricatures

Caricatures

Bathsheba

“I had a lover once, her name was Bathsheba.  She was a happily married woman.  I began to feel as though we were crewing a submarine.  We couldn’t tell our friends, at least she couldn’t tell hers because they were his tool.  I couldn’t tell mine because she asked me not to do so.  We sank lower and lower in our love-lined coffin.  Telling the truth, she said, was a luxury we could not afford and so lying became a virtue, an economy we had to practice.  Telling the truth was hurtful and so lying became a good deed.”

Bathsheba – Her names “Daughter of the Oath”.  Bathsheba was seduced by David who was mesmerized by her beauty.  Her personality was distinctly passive in regards to her relationships with her husbands, son and stepson.  Bathsheba was married to a soldier, Uriah the Hittite.  David had an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba in which she became pregnant.  This affair cost Uriah his life when David could not force him to leave his fighting troops and come home to have sex with his wife so the coconspirators could pass the child off as Uriah’s.  After Uriah was murdered, David married Bathsheba and the child from that union died. 

Indicative of Bathsheba’s name in the text she had taken the oath of marriage and was also a happily married woman.  Just as Bathsheba and David had to be co-conspirators in their story, it felt as if the Narrator and Bathsheba were coconspirators in their story.  They had a secret relationship just as Bathsheba and David did.  David tried to abandon his responsibility to Bathsheba, and tried to get Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to come home from a war and have sex with his wife so they could blame this pregnancy on him.  Uriah’s loyalty to his troops and the code of ethics won out.  David eventually had Uriah murdered.    As David’s and Bathsheba’s relationship sank deeper and deeper into lies until Uriah was murdered, so did the Narrator’s and Bathsheba’s relationship sink until lies became a good deed.  They continued to sink into the lie of the relationship even after Bathsheba’s and David’s baby died.  Perhaps the Narrator’s and Bathsheba feared what would come out of the truth about their relationship, either the husband would find out or perhaps something between them would flare up.  Eros is not love; it is that beautiful erotic thing that we sometimes get confused with Agape.  The coffin is a hiding place, a place of protection for what these two people held priceless, themselves.  I feel that the Narrator has given us a brawl between truth and lies, David lost his child, our Narrator has not yet found ‘self’.   “…’I intended to tell you before we left but I forgot.’ I looked at her, sudden and sharp. I hated that ‘we’.  ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘Uriah got NSU from a woman he slept with in New York.  He slept with her to punish me of course.  But he didn’t tell me and the doctor thinks I have it too.  I’ve been taking the antibiotics so it’s probably all right.  That is, you’re probably all right. You ought to check though.’”

Girlfriend

            “I had a girlfriend once who was addicted to starlit nights.  She thought beds belonged in hospitals.  Anywhere she could do it that wasn’t pre-sprung was sexy.  Show her a duvet and she switched on the television.  I coped with this on campsites and in canoes, British Rail and Aeroflot.  I bought a futon, eventually a gym mat.  I had to lay extra-thick carpet on the floor.  I took to carrying a tartan rug wherever I went, like a far-out member of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Eventually, back at the doctor’s for the fifth time having a thistle removed, he said to me, ‘You know, love is a very beautiful thing but there are clinics for people like you’  Now, it’s a serious matter to have ‘PERVERT’ written on your NHS file and some indignities are just a romance too far.  We had to say goodbye and although there were some things about her that I missed it was pleasant to walk in the country again without seeing every bush and shrub as a potential assailant.”  

The Narrator seems to need some independence here just as the Scottish Nationalist Party campaigns for an independence from the United Kingdom; and the Narrator desires independence from this relationship.     The other thing that is striking is that this ‘girlfriend’ has no name.  “To pronounce a name is in some sense effectually is to create or present it.”  For this person the Narrator saw no purpose or forgot the young lady’s name, an essential part of the person is missing.  There was nothing to set her apart from the other women except where they had sex, not even that they had sex set them apart.  Like so many women in the Bible who have no names, hence they were deemed unimportant, so should we deem this “girlfriend”?  Or should we just reckon she really did not exist?  After it is all said and done, the only thing we really know about this individual is she loved sex out of doors.  We don’t know anything about what she looked like, her favorite color, what she did for a living – nothing.  I wonder is that because the Narrator is stretching patriarchal family values or is it queer theory assuming again that sexual identities are fluid and the name is not necessary or is not having a name secondary to her sex life?

Inge

“I was in the last spasms of an affair with a Dutch girl called Inge.  She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist.  This was hard for her because it meant she couldn’t blow up beautiful buildings.  She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly SCALE an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t’aime.…I thought I loved her and then came the pigeons….She forbade me to telephone her.  She said that telephones were for Receptionists, that is, women without status.  I said, fine, I’ll write.  Wrong, she said.  The Postal Service was run by despots who exploited non-union labour.  What were we to do?  I didn’t want to live in Holland.  She didn’t want to live in London.  How could we communicate?  Pigeons, she said.”

This episode in the text was really humorous which I found to be some balance to the more serious women the Narrator writes about.  Inge name means god of Ing, which is associated with the god of fertility, is an anarcha-feminist which is a difficult thing to accomplish alone let alone she is also a hopeless romantic.  But since romance is about a somewhat frustrated psychological quest, or impossible dream or passionate love thrown against a setting of impossible social or economic or psychological odds this seems to be fitting for Inge.  I found it totally hilarious and easily saw the romance in it.  It can be considered romantic to think of  destroying what man has deemed important “scale an erection”, and equally as funny to cancel it because one thinks of young lovers in Paris.  Though Inge is difficult to believe, and obviously has chosen a difficult way to communicate, I think I like her because she is so unbelievable.  I also note that I stated that Inge was unbelievable not the Narrator.  The Narrator is still objectifying women and their bodies.  Inge is a pair of breasts – no more – no less as to why the Narrator did not leave. 

Second Woman – No Name

“I had bought a new flat to start again from a nasty love affair that had given me the clap.  …this was emotional clap.  I had to keep my heart to myself in case I infected somebody. …The clap-giver was still with her husband in their tasteful house but she’d slipped me L 10,000 to help finance my purchase.  Give/Lend was how she put it.  Blood money was how I put it.  She was buying off what conscience she had.  I intended never to see her again.  Unfortunately she was my dentist.”     

This seemed odd to me that our Narrator could and would be bought.  I also find it odd for someone who has had successive lovers to now want a reprieve from sexual activity in particular.  I say sexual activity because that is where the Narrator took it, and then used the street name clap rather than the term gonorrhea.  Of course, if left untreated gonorrhea will affect joints, spreads throughout the body and will even affect the heart valves.  The flat was not  cared for, but neither was the Narrator.  The Narrator’s anger is oozing through the cracks.   Not to mention Bathsheba did come to the Narrator with a case of clap which was a negative for the Narrator.  This makes the Narrator unreliable in one instance it is an emotional clap, later there stands a possibility of real physical clap.

Jacqueline

            “I considered her.  She had no expensive tastes, knew nothing about wine, never wanted to be taken to the opera and had fallen in love with me. I had no money and no morale.  It was a marriage made in heaven.  We agreed that we were good for each other whilst sitting in her Mini eating a Chinese take away.”

May God protect or supplanter that is what Jacqueline means – Jacob.  Change had been discussed and the Narrator thought there was change, but that is not what Jacqueline saw.  “I thought you’d already changed.  You told me you wouldn’t do this again.  You told me you wanted a different life.  It’s easy to hurt me.”  At the very beginning there was simplicity and ordinariness, but not love.  Jacqueline came at the end of a relationship with the clap giver.  They agreed there would be no joy, but somebody forgot to tell Jacqueline to guard her heart.   Somebody forgot to tell the Narrator settling does not work it only prolongs the inevitable.  They forgot to tell that the next woman will be a married woman and maybe even the next.  Perhaps this is where Narrator found comfort with women who could only step into a Phileo love.  Even Jacqueline’s love was Phileo – it had conditions strapped to it - which the Narrator had changed or would change.   Then the Narrator finds agape with Louise, an unconditional love that wanted the best for Louise, there was a committed service kind of love.  Though I believe the competition between Elgin and Louise made the prize more endearing people like to win the hunt you know. 

            I believe the narrator is as reliable as many of us would be when flitting in and out of relationships.  It seems to be easier to live in a fantasy and have relationships fit around that fantasy than to live in truth and have to really transform.  Who did I see when I awakened this morning?  Who was I at mid-day?  When it is time to go to bed is there anything in me that I could have done better or changed, not for the betterment of someone else (though that is important) but what can I change to make life better for me.  If it is an attitude that could stand a change – then change it.  If it is negative thinking that needs to be changed, work on thinking positive a bit at a time.

            I believe the Narrator was definitely in love with Louise.  But how do you do love when you have not known love in that manner.  How frightening it must be to come face to face with the unknown and be helpless against it.  Maybe the Narrator will have more to give away next time around with some one else.  I believe that there are three parts to us humans, a physical side, a spiritual side, and a psychological side.  There are all different, but all in one person.  I also believe those are all shown at different times in our lives.  It does not mean that we are unstable, just that a different side is being shown.  If we really got down nitty and gritty of our thoughts – believe me, no one would recognize most of us!