The Revolution Will Not Be Televised... Now What?
This entry has been a long time coming. I started it as the leaves were falling and finished it under the frost of a December moon. Chronologically, this entry should follow What's Good and precede An Apology to Readers. I was going to wait until the end of the year to publish this in a series called ‘The LOSTories: Flashbacks From 2015 and may still do so. But for those of you who have kept the faith with me, this is a small token of my gratitude... a little piece of me, for all of you.
10.24.15
I usually don’t preface my blog entries under the assumption that if you are offended by what you read here, you probably just won’t come back. That’s okay with me. I promise not to send the agreement police to blow down on you if you promise not to troll me.
This is a special case. It’s so special, that instead of a three second background (3SB), I’m going to give you a story.
For most of my childhood, I lived with my Mom, Great Aunt, and Grandma on Fourth Avenue in East Cleveland. My mom was on welfare, which is to say she was a stay at home mom that walked me to school everyday, was actively involved in PTA, provided me with home cooked meals and healthy snacks, and helped me with my homework.
During the summer she planned learning activities(extra work) and urban safari adventures (free activities), and found safe haven from sweltering days spent beneath an ancient box fan at one of the city’s three public libraries.
“Why do you get so many books?” I asked one day. I was new to the whole reading thing and couldn’t quite grasp why she needed so many books every week, and none of them even had any pictures!
“Knowledge is the only thing you can own in this world that no one can ever take from you.” she replied. “When you learn something, a word, a fact-- you own it, and that makes you rich.”
My mother didn’t care about money. For most of our lives, we didn’t have two pennies to rub together, but we always had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and books.
Looking back on it now, my mother was a bit strange. But then? Oh man, she was the S*&^! We went to the art museum and the ballet and the westside market, all exotic locations to my prepubescent mind. We went on one tank trips and bus trips, and wherever we couldn’t afford to travel to, we read about.
I saw Italy through the eyes of St. Paul and Shakespeare, London by way of Dickens and Poe, Africa through Countee Cullen contact lenses. I read, I questioned, and I grew rich.
By the time I was nine, no self respecting nine year old would be caught dead in my company. I was an overachiever, a curve-blower, a teacher’s pet with the unfortunate habit of saying things that made adults want to give me a cookie and kids want to deck me.
I didn’t have any friends on my street. So when my mom told me we were moving out of my grandma’s house and into a new, (Section 8 approved) house on Potomac, just three blocks away from North Branch Library (my favorite for various reasons, but mainly because I hadn’t won the summer reading challenge four years in a row at that branch, so none of the other nerdy kids gave me dirty looks), I was ecstatic.
We moved in over the summer and stayed until the winter, when our landlord used his key to let himself into my mother’s bedroom in the hopes of ‘spreading a little christmas cheer’ with her. The next place was on Hayden, and it was even worse.
The house sat between a bodega and a storefront church. Our neighbors used the alley that ran between our house and the church as a drive through drug service. When my mother called the police and told them the upstairs neighbors were selling drugs off the porch, they told her to get their full names, any aliases, and driver’s license number if possible.
My mother snidely replied if they would bring her a revolver and some cuffs, she could just drop them off at jail.
Needless to say, we moved before the winter was out.
This was around the time our relatives started calling mom Popcorn Terri, because we moved around a few more times before we found a home on MIlan, just six blocks over from my grandma’s.
The worst place we ever lived, hands down, was a basement apartment on Burnette and Euclid, right across the street from Angela Mia’s Pizza. Not only was it a ridiculously long walk to school, the building was so hood, cockroaches were afraid to move in.
Hookers had a short commute from ‘home’ to ‘work’ on the corner of the street. There was a bus stop but no shelter, so people liked to hang on our stoop when it rained or snowed, which was pretty much all the time. No place delivered, not even the pizza place across the street. There was a police substation two doors down but nobody manned it. Our security door was always on the fritz. Either the lock was busted, the glass had been shot out, or both, rendering it utterly useless. A classmate and I used to make a game out of guessing how many days a new window or lock would last.
We spent a lot of nights at my grandmother’s. I knew my mom was depressed about the situation, not because she cried or complained but because all she wanted to listen to in those days was Billie Holiday.
We had a nice system, state of the art really, for the nineties. It played 45’s, 78’s, AM/FM and Memorex (Little Vinyl, Big Vinyl, Radio, and Tapes for you millennials). It even had a feature that allowed you to record from radio or vinyl. It was as tall as me and weighed a ton, and was quite possibly, the only thing of any resale value in the entire apartment. We had an eleven inch television that my mother turned on twice a day: once at 6:00 AM to check for school closings and once at 10:00 PM to watch the evening news and Murphy Brown.
My mother could sew, but her machine was the ancient, hand-crank kind without any fancy electronic parts. She did however, own a pair of Singer scissors that would cut through anything, including flesh if she wasn’t careful. I wasn’t allowed to touch them under any circumstances. I didn’t realize it then but I think she kept them as much for protection as for patterns.
Anywho, we came home late one evening from a visit with grandma. It was a new door day, so Mom actually needed to use her key to get in the building. Our apartment was a different story. The door was wide open, listing on its hinges.
My mother did what any single mother who was not a blonde in a Ryan Murphy flick would do-- walked me out of the building and down two blocks to the police substation. Which is how we discovered no one really worked there. Ah, East Cleveland.
After calling the police from Angela Mias, waiting a half hour for them to show up, and finally walking through our place, we discovered there were only two things missing: the TV and her sewing scissors. I guess the stereo system was to heavy to move quickly (take that, I-pod!).
Now here’s the weird (and relevant) part. My mom didn’t care about the TV, but she mourned those scissors like a childhood pet. She worked odd jobs until she had enough money to buy another pair, which she guarded like Fort Knox. The television never got replaced, and to be honest, I never missed it.
I say all of that to say this: I don’t watch BET. This is not a commentary on the value of Love and Hip Hop or an example of an elitist HWP (honorary white person) looking down her nose at common folk. I don’t watch much TV and what I do see is usually though Hulu or some other online platform.
So I don’t watch BET. I do live BEL (black everyday life), so I reserve the right to:
- Feel excited and relive my ‘Bring it On’ days whenever I hear, see, or think about Being Mary Jane while simultaneously feeling disappointed about the archetypal Jezebel role she portrays;
- Be deeply offended on behalf of all black people by the fact that a network I don’t even watch is no longer black owned, and;
- Recognize, but never admit that so many more white kids watch BET than black kids that it might as well be called White Entertainment Television, then snicker when I think about the acronym.
Up until two Saturdays ago, point C was the spoonful of sugar that allowed me to swallow down points A and B. Because on October 15, 2015 B/WET violated Black America’s unspoken agreement:
Treat us like we matter, and we’ll overlook the race pimping.
On a day when an estimated one and a half million people marched on Washington to commemorate the twenty year anniversary of the Million Man March, B/WET opted to show the BET Awards.
Oops.
Have you ever watched your little sibling say something to your parent that is absolutely, positively, going to end badly?
It was kind of like that, only much worse.
I got it from TMZ, who says they got it directly from the horse’s mouth, and as we all know, TMZ never lies.
To paraphrase would be an injustice in this instance. I want you to think of the stupidest possible thing a BET spokesperson could say in this moment. Do you have that firmly fixed in your mind? Good. Now scroll down and see if you have the ability to reach the outer limits of human stupidity.
“We decided not to air the Million Man March beacuse we are working towards racial equality and to end division among whites and blacks. Although we understand the reasoning behind the Million Man March led by the Honorable Minster Louis Farrakhan, we can stand behind a theme that is “Justice or Else”. The ideology behind the theme encourages violence towards whites and we do not condone violent acts of terror against whites or any other races. We started as a black entertainment television company but now we have moved forward and we have viewers of the white community we wish not to offend by airing the Million Man March”
Grammatical errors aside, this statement is quite possibly the most inappropriate and impolitic response made by a public figure in a decade.
Oh wait, Donald Trump is running for president. Scratch that.
Still, it will go down in history alongside such famous verbal foibles as “Let them eat cake!” and “We’re gonna smoke ‘em out”. There are so many things to criticize in that one paragraph that I don’t even have room to discuss the Dem Debate (but I will come back to it later).
And just to prove to my reader(s?) that I am an equal opportunity criticizer,
***SPOILER ALERT: I’ve got plenty of shade to throw on the protest organizers too.
10.26.2015
To fully understand how huge of a Charlie Foxtrot this response is, we’re going to read it again.
I know. I still have shudders from the first time too, but I promise to go slow and be gentle. Just not on B/WET.
“We decided not to air the Million Man March beacuse we are working towards racial equality and to end division among whites and blacks.
Okay. That sounds pretty good. Actually, it sounds pretty familiar. Isn’t that what this Anniversary march thingy is about? Isn’t that what the original one was about?
Come to think of it, isn’t that what all marches are about?
According to the protest organizers website: “We want justice! We want equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally regardless to creed or class or color.”
Despite having nearly identical goals, the head honchos at B/WET seemed to be completely unaware of what the head honchos at Million Man redux were all about.
They prove my point by continuing:
“Although we understand the reasoning behind the Million Man March led by the Honorable Minster Louis Farrakhan, we can stand behind a theme that is “Justice or Else”. The ideology behind the theme encourages violence towards whites and we do not condone violent acts of terror against whites or any other races.”
Violent acts of terror? Against whites? Somehow I missed that in the organizational highlights. So I went back and re-read the website, looking specifically for threats of violence or terror. Because those can be so subtle.
Ranting about police brutality, economic injustice, and health disparities. Quotes from MLK. Quotes from the Q’uran. Snoozefest.
I skim through a promising paragraph titled The Fight, where there is talk of a “redistribution of pain”... through economic withdrawal?
Huh?
Yep, that’s right folks. The big, scary threat of ‘or else’ is a threat not of physical retaliation, but of economic withdrawal. The site quotes:
“We have a purchasing power of over 1 trillion dollars but in our reckless and wasteful spending habits we have not been able to pool our resources in a collective manner to build institutions and create jobs for our people. By strategically engaging in economic withdrawal we can begin putting power behind our demands and build a new and better reality.
Let us start us start by not spending money we either don’t have or cannot afford during the Christmas season. Why should we make the merchants rich by their wicked manipulation and exploitation of the emotions of children, parents, families and those we love, with their pagan practices that have nothing to do with the celebration and observance of the righteous servant of God, Jesus? Let us take that day, the entire season to give thanks to God for the gift of Jesus and share that great gift of God and what he taught to our families.”
Now, I’m no multibajillion dollar company, just a humble little blogger with delusions of grandeur and plans to change the world, but even I spend a little time doing research before I spout unqualified opinions. I guess that would make me overqualified to work at B/WET. If anyone had taken two minutes to fact check the Justice or Else website, B/WET executives wouldn’t be munching on phalanges right now.
Or could it be that somehow an even more sinister and complex plot is afoot? Is it possible the B/WET executives knew exactly what Justice or Else meant, and were unwilling to give such an economically radical movement a national platform through which to spread? After all, B/WET’s main constituency is white youth. What would happen if little Tommy and Sarah decide to boycott Black Friday this year in solidarity with their black and brown classmates?
Not for me to decide. But I do question: What is B/WET really afraid of?
12.2.2015
Coming back to this after all the mayhem that has been this Thanksgiving season gives me an entirely new perspective. B/WET is old news nowadays. We’ve moved on to terrorism, both foreign and domestic. In the very season that we are supposed to spend being thankful for what we have, I’ve seen an alarming amount of people being hateful towards those who have nothing.
I can’t close my eyes and block out the world as it is, but I can prevent myself from being so myopic about it that I lose sight of the world as it can be. The negatives are there- Police killings rival terrorism deaths, Syrians are being left to their holocaust in the name of ‘homeland security’, Donald Trump is still running for President. But shadows cannot exist in the absence of light-- without taking moments to reflect on the beauty in the world, the things worth saving, we run the risk of forgetting what we’re fighting for.
Because, let’s face it, no one is fighting for Donald Trump.
So in the spirit of being humble, obedient, and all around a better person, I have decided to make a change within myself. I’m going to give equal time in my mental airspace to the positives in the world. This will be difficult for me, because I have to look harder for the positives, but, like flowers in the desert, their rarity simply makes them more precious.
I’m looking for the flowers, those precious, living gems, and suddenly, I’m starting to see them everywhere.
I had the march all wrong. By focusing on B/WET’s lack of coverage I skewed the perspective away from what was really important: The march happened. Over 800,000 attended the march, and they didn’t show up for the chance to get on television. B/WET’s lack of coverage polarized the issue, forcing people to do their own research on Justice or Else and inadvertently spreading the message of economic withdrawal from coast to coast right on time for the holiday season.
Protests on the Magnificent mile cut Black Friday spending in half this year, and overall shopping was down 10% nationwide. Beyond the immediate impact, Black America is beginning to realize that sharing the pain through economic withdrawal is only one step towards the justice we seek in America. We have to reinvest the money we are withdrawing from corporate America into our own neighborhoods. We have to build black wealth. And we need our white friends and allies’ help.
This is a war that cannot be fought in silos. It won’t be won through the media or by changing laws. The fight for justice can only be won by conquering minds and hearts with a message of love and unity. Our tactics of faith, facts, and common sense are already spreading through social media and word of mouth in keeping with the African ancestral tradition of oral histories. Change is happening- in individuals, small groups, congregations and communities and with everyday we face a critical choice-- to complain about the state of the world or to become part of the effort to change it.
I’m choosing change.
Between now and 2016, MYStory BOTB will be investigating and sharing ways to change the world, and celebrating those that are already doing so, on scales both large and small.
To kick off this season of change I’m going to personally put my money where my mouth is. Every Friday from now until the end of the year, Golden Goddess Cosmetics (my awesomazing all natural skin and haircare brand) is offering 25% off the entire shop with promo code BUYBLACKEVERYFRIDAY.
It’s all on sale here
Because one day a year is not enough. Because the effects of injustice are felt every day,in every city, state and country, everywhere. Because we have to start somewhere.
Because the world is worth saving.
So I’ll be staying true to my roots of ignoring the idiot box, and seeking out my tribe online or maybe even (gasp) face to face. You’ll know us when you see us. We’ll be the ones diligently working to change the world-- the ones chanting...
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised... So What?
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