“Catalytic donors don’t treat individual community members as charity recipients. They instead view individuals as potent participants in the process of solving problems – for themselves” -Crutchfield, Kania and Kramer, “Do More Than Good”

This quote struck me today as I reflected on the past two days of my alternative Spring Break trip with a group of undergraduate students from the University of Maryland. For seven days we will work in food banks, community gardens, homeless shelters, and nonprofit organizations providing social services to homeless individuals who suffer from substance abuse and mental health issues. Since we’ve been here, we’ve heard numerous times how great it is that a group of students would “sacrifice” their spring break to “do good.” A feeling of falsehood and embarrassment has been gnawing at me throughout my time here because of the embedded privilege and hierarchy our service creates between us and  the people we “serve”.

To think that we should be commended for giving back when we have been privileged to have so much seems antithetical to what service means to me. For me, service is an act of humility and the fulfillment of a duty to your community. To think that acting communally and collectively is a sacrifice, especially as visitors in a predominately African American city, is laughable in light of the legacy in the black community of creating opportunities for the disadvantaged to gain access to opportunities that have historically been denied to them. My ancestors (nor the people I see in my home community who give back in their churches and other organizations) did not define what they did as service, nor did they spend time patting themselves on the back for doing what was needed. That belief that they were doing what needed to be done with no regard for pomp or circumstance eliminated any artificial divisions between volunteer and recipient.

I swallowed the bitter taste of paternalism each time we told our community partners what we were here for. It seemed almost audacious to come into a community that we did not belong to or even fully understand and believe that we could (or should) make an impact that deserved applause. It seemed to somehow undercut the agency and power within these communities to think that a group of young people from hundreds of miles away could save a community. I doubt any of my participants felt that they were saving the world and I’m sure they know that our planting, organizing and feeding will not solve the problems of hunger or homelessness in Atlanta. But I do believe many have come in with beliefs that our time, energy and good intentions mean that we can’t be a part of the problem.

Yet, who are we to come in smelling of college textbooks and ivory tower ideas, patting ourselves on the back for “helping” others? Does our unacknowledged naivete make us any less culpable for diverting attention away from community solutions and the will and ability of community members to create change? Do our good intentions hide the smugness with which we swooped in with our theoretically-based solutions to problems we assume we know how to define for communities we’ve assumed agree with and buy-in to our interventions? I had proudly clung to the fact that we purposely chose to sleep on the floor of a local church and lived on a food budget of seven dollars a day – but was this not also a flex of our privilege? What made us anything more than minstrel show performers trying on the lives of families in need, only to cast them away after we had served our term and collected our congratulations.  Who are we to play the part of people we have seldom met and reflect on lives we have never lived?

In a larger sense, this experience made me reflect on all the ways that I and others like me (college-educated, millennials) try to “do good” in communities. Unfortunately, there is an unspoken belief that the communities we “serve” are nothing more than voids to be filled. How often do we as servant leaders, change makers, and grant givers ask communities what THEY see as the solution to the social problems that plague their communities? Moreover, how often do we provide spaces for them to define the scope of the problem(s)they struggle with? How often do we dare to cross the invisible lines of race, class, and geography that separate “givers” from “recipients”? When is the last time we saw the poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized populations  we interact with as sources of knowledge to be tapped into and engaged with as partners, rather than case studies to be analyzed and problems to be fixed? How do our mainstream definitions of and collective beliefs about philanthropy and civic engagement reinforce the traditional ways of viewing and engaging with communities? Where do we go from here?

Oh Mittens, you just couldn’t take your defeat admirably could you? Former Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney cited President Obama’s “gifts” to minorities and young people as the reasoning for his win. Romney stated that the

“president’s camping [focused] on certain members of his base coalition, g[a]ve them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote…with regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift…free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women…and then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan…likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus”

This followed on the heels of Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s claims that Obama’s win was due to “some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,”i.e. all of the Black people who voted for Obama. It is the oft-repeated claim that Black people voted for Obama because of his race not his politics. Yet, Obama won states with overwhelming white majorities such as New Hampshire and Iowa. Paul Ryan fails on two points: First he makes the assumption that minorities cannot vote on anything other than racial concerns, without taking the argument to its subsequent logical extent - meaning white people who didn’t vote for Obama did so based on their race.  Second, it cannot explain Black individuals who voted for Romney (I see you Stacey Dash) or did not support either candidate (The Cornel West situation is a perfect example and a situation that deserves a whole other post).

Ryan ascribes to a faulty belief in the racelessness of whiteness, affording white Americans the ability to think beyond their ethnicity, while denying that same consideration to African Americans and other minorities. For him their are no “white concerns” there are only “minority” or “urban” concerns. Furthermore, he ignores the diversity of American political opinions and needs across and among racial groups. SNAP benefits, extended unemployment benefits and other “welfare” programs have provided a safety net for families of all racial backgrounds and include formerly middle class individuals and families who have suffered in the economic downturn. 15% of Americans receive food assistance, which means that even if all the Black people in American got them there would still have to be recipients of other races. This misjudgment and inability to understand a country one is campaigning to represent cost the Romney-Ryan duo the election. Not some perceived racial alliance. The African American community AND the white community are more complex than this.

Mitt Romney’s disavowal of 47 percent of the electorate, his flip-flopping, “binder full of women,” and his lack of a clear vision of America moving forward hurt his election, not his lack of melanin. Americans of all races and ethnicity have voted for White presidential candidates for decades before President Barack Obama based on the issues. This hasn’t changed.

As a woman, I will not vote for a presidential candidate who denies my right to choose and access to affordable women’s health care by defunding places such as Planned Parenthood that are the primary places for many women’s gynecological health care. I’m sure many women of all races would agree. As a student, I support a candidate, black or white, who will make college more affordable for all students by instating student loan forgiveness, flexible repayment options, and more transparent policies for higher education. And I, like most Americans, love Big Bird and grew up on PBS so I don’t support a Presidential candidate who is is not down with the Bird.

Last time I checked, my concern for my gynecological health, financial future, and appreciation for public educational programming are policy concerns, not racial concerns. Nor should a President granting access to the “American Dream” be seen as a “gift”, but his duty as a public servant. Barack Obama is not Santa Claus. He is our President. Let’s start acting like it.

I’ll start out by acknowledging that I haven’t written in forever.A part of this lack of writing is driven by the growing pull of “adult” work/life responsibilities; But I must admit, a bigger part of it feels a little more traitorous. More like the comfortably treacherous resting spot of complacency. 

I’ve tried to rack it up as the normal progression of young adults transitioning from college to the workforce. Protest isn’t as readily available (nor is time). I tell myself that when I get “settled in to things” I’ll get back into that good old activism.

But months have now turned into a year, and I am not the woman that I used to be. I toss and turn at night asking myself “am I upholding the ideals I’d set for myself when I began this journey toward social justice” (not that it’s a place, in fact it’s more of a process)? And increasingly, more timidly I find myself asking, “am I a good feminist?”

This second question has crept it’s way into the forefront of my year of independent adulthood. Each month cracking away at the sturdy feminist foundation I thought I had built. I started this year, two weeks out of undergrad - degree in hand (with solo apartment, salaried job, and  new car to follow), believing I was living the dream. I was independent. Doing it all on my own, answering to no one, depending on no one (oh the joys of the Strong Black Woman trope). I was the epitome of what I’d learned Black feminism was about.

Then I met a man, to be honest a few, who slowly unraveled the blanket of security, confidence, and independence I had knit around me. Each one bleaching the bright hues I had painted in declaring my uncompromising will to achieve each and every goal I set in spite of all the reasons my race, gender, and class dictated that I shouldn’t. It wasn’t all their fault I will admit. I for one cannot claim a feminism that will exalt my victimhood without equally acknowledging my agency in the matter.

So we, I and they, created a world where I slowly became less of myself.

It happened slowly, imperceptibly at first, I would give them bits of me, bits of my feminism until I was left here, a fraction of myself asking, “am I a good feminist?”

It started with the one who had the allure that only an educated, driven, black man can have. He, like all the rest was older, making my deference so easy, so natural. He mentored and consoled me. We embarked on a spiritual journey together. In the midst of all this bliss, who was I to speak out against the things I considered small slights on the patriarchy scale? Things I’m sure my feminist self would forgive. Of course she would overlook the benevolent sexism: the opening of doors, paying for meals, guiding my footsteps by the small of my back. I mean I do (technically) live in the South. It’s how things are here. I even convinced myself that playing second to other women wasn’t so bad because he’s an EDUCATED BLACK MAN with a GOOD JOB willing to stand by and support me. I mean men like that are practically extinct right? Who was I to complain?

Then there was the stalker. The man who couldn’t take no for an answer. Who took access to my body as a given because “I was a STRONG BLACK WOMAN,  I couldn’t be taken advantage of. I HAD to have wanted it, or I wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place.” He used all the power patriarchy and manhood placed at his feet to intimidate and control me. The threats, then the gifts given to a woman who, though independent, couldn’t do it all for herself.

I have to admit my part in it. For months I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. I found comfort in believing that male sexual violence was something bigger than me. It was patriarchy’s fault, who am I to try to fight it? Besides, turning him in would be sending one more black man to jail and I for one did not want anything to do with that atrocity. Finally, after a break in and a death threat I got a restraining order. By restraining him I freed myself. Or so I thought… because there it is again, that sweet patriarchy, wrapped up in gifts, trips, and dinners, tasting like “I love you.”

I met a man. I fell in love. That “Love Jones” type of love. He was a hardworker and a poet. He gave me everything I could ever want because he wanted to support all my dreams. He filled the difference and paid for all the things I couldn’t afford as a STRONG BLACK WOMAN working two jobs, and preparing for graduate school. “How noble” I thought, “How did I end up so lucky?” With all this luck in the air, it was easier to overlook his homophobia than to argue (I blamed it on black culture’s strong ties to the church). It was easier to ignore the underlying feeling that if children came into the picture, child-rearing would fall to me, career and educational aspirations or not. He was such a wordsmith that he made giving up my feminist self sound good.

It was in the midst of this garage sale of myself that I found Joan Morgan’s “When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost…my life as a Hip-Hop Feminist.” She gave voice to all those feelings I was too scared to acknowledge in the light. She asked the questions I had encountered head on during this year of self-shedding, like:

“Can you be a good feminist and admit out loud that there are things you kinda dig about patriarchy?”

“Suppose you don’t want to pay for your own dinner, hold the door open, fix things, move furniture, or get intimate with whatever’s under the hood of a car?”

“Is it foul to say that imagining a world where you could paint your big brown lips in the most decadent of shades, pile your phat ass into your fave micro-mini, slip your freshly manicured toes into four-inch fuck-me sandals and have not one single solitary man objectify- I mean roam his eyes longingly over all the intended places—is, like, a total drag for you?

“Am I no longer down for the cause if I admit that while total gender equality is an interesting intellectual concept, it doesn’t do a damn thing for me erotically? That, truth be told, men with too many “feminist” sensibilities have never made my panties wet, at least not like that reformed thug nigga who can make even the most chauvinistic “wassup, baby” feel like a sweet, wet tongue darting in and out of your ear”

Better yet she called for a feminism “…brave enough to fuck with the grays. And this was not my foremothers’ feminism.” Isn’t that what I was in? The gray space that we ignore in high-minded conversations about theory? Morgan discussed a more complicated feminism that didn’t hold on to “the protective mantle of victimization” without also discussing the complicity of women.

More broadly, she notes that in the midst of all the sexism women of color face, benevolent and otherwise, “the real crime isn’t the name-calling (the bitches and hos), it’s their failure to love us—to be our brothas in the way that we commit ourselves to being their sistas. But recognize: Any man who doesn’t truly love himself is incapable of loving us in the healthy way we need to be loved. It’s extremely telling that men who can only see us as “bitches” and “hos” refer to themselves only as “niggas.” She offered a critique that is unique in its willingness to not only acknowledge the traditional markers of sexism, but also the plight of the women who are trying to love these men where they are, not where we want them to be. Women who are dealing with the broader issue of loving men who do not love themselves.

And then she offers a solution that spoke to me in a way that my old textbook-wielding feminist self no longer could.

“…the focus of black feminists has got to change. We can’t afford to keep expending energy on banal discussions of sexism in rap (or the benevolent sort) when sexism is only part of a huge set of problems. Continuing on our previous path is akin to demanding that a fiending, broke crackhead not rob you blind because it’s wrong to do so. If feminism intends to have any relevance in the lives of the majority of black women…it has to rescue itself from the ivory towers of academia.”

So it’s here outside the walls of academia, smack dab in the middle of the day-to-day that I ask, “am I a good feminist?” and more pointedly, how do I become a good black man loving feminist? How do I love a man that has not been taught to love himself? How do you love someone without losing yourself?

And most critically, in the midst of all the rights-gaining,self-proclaiming, patriarchy-blaming feminism I have known, where is the road map for love?

I am the 1%. The 1 percent of individuals who just doesn’t feel right jumping on the Chris Brown and Rihanna controversy bandwagon *gasp*. I get this metallic taste in my mouth every time I read articles or see twitter rants about the horrors of Chris Brown.

It’s not because I don’t think his actions, or intimate partner violence at large, aren’t wrong. It’s just that something about it all feels…hypocritical.

That familiar taste worked it’s way into my mouth as I read countless articles about Chris Brown and Rihanna’s most recent collaboration(s). One in particular, “Cake Remix,” has caused controversy because the public largely perceives Rihanna as weak for “goingback to her abuser.” And with lyrics like:

“Sweeter than a rice cake, cake worth sippin

Kill it, tip it

Cake, fill it

If you sexy and you know it And you ain’t afraid to show it

Put a candle on my motherf**ng back baby blow it”

There’s definitely cause for concern. But the concern shouldn’t (just) be about Rihanna. What’s cause for concern is that we as a society are outraged by these violently sexual lyrics, but will scream out “that’s my jam!” to Trey Songz music (“Beat It Up”, anyone?) or Kelly Rowland’s “Lay It On Me” (umm, let’s talk about Big Sean’s verse: Put your skirt on, turn you to my school girl. Smack you with my ruler girl”). We are a generation that increasingly ties our sexuality to violence. As Yolo Akili says in his article for the Crunk Feminist Collective

“from “cut”, “hit”, “beat it up” “kill it” and “smash,” pop songs about love [and intimacy] sound more like war every day. And that should be frightening to us all.”

It was in reading this article that I discovered the root of that feeling of hypocrisy. We are the ultimate example of “clubbing on Saturday and going to church on Sunday.” We cry out against sinners and wrong-doers, while we secretly glorify and do those same things in our everyday lives 6 days out of the week. We are what I call the “fad diet generation”. We’ll all jump up and boycott the latest high-profile controversy that we can scrutinize, villify, and “fix”- short-sighted in both our attention span  and approach. Countless numbers of my friends and colleagues have proudly proclaimed that they “don’t support Chris Brown’s music” as a sign of solidarity in the fight against domestic violence.

They are the same people who tweeted #toomuchdoubt for Troy Davis and jumped on the 99 percent fad on Tumblr and the #OWS movement. Yet few of these people will be seen tweeting everyday cases of injustice. What about the millions of voiceless women (and men) who suffer from intimate partner violence? The millions of black men inside and outside of prison who face a system that paves a pathway from cradle to prison? Where are our discussions about poverty now that the Occupy movements have been largely ousted?

Our advocacy work as young people will be doomed to fail if we do not perform an honest re-assessment of ourselves. We are willing to jump on the latest national craze, but are largely stuck in neutral (or even reverse) when it comes to sustained organizing. We want results and we want them now. We are fad dieters and closet “cake” eaters. We’ll latch on to the latest craze, until the media (and we alongside it) find something more interesting and sensational.

We have internalized our own oppression by failing to investigate the myriad ways we prop up systems of injustice. We need a Weight Watchers plan- a sustainable road map for organizing and advocacy that focuses on the day-to-day struggles that come with weening ourselves off of things that are bad for us.  A plan that tallies our everyday intake of poison and requires that we do a daily, weekly, and monthly assessment of how closely our actions are fitting into our larger goals. 

We want the easy route. The route that circumvents the nuances that come with social justice. I believe we’re so tied to Chris Brown and Rihanna because we want so badly to believe that intimate partner violence is a simple “get hit and quit” equation. But as Akili points out:

“many women do not not always want their male partner to leave, so much as they want the abuse to stop. That is in of itself a tough pill to swallow, especially to those who purport to believe that an act of physical violence in a partnership commands departure and is irredeemable.

However in the real world, a lot of heterosexual women in this country are abused by their male partners and not leaving for a variety of nuanced and complicated reasons, perhaps most obvious among them a legal system and community that will not protect or support them.

So while it’s easy for many to say,  ’If he hits me I’ll leave’ the conditions that intimate partner violence creates are often a lot more complicated. It would seem our overly simplistic and condemning attitudes towards this phenomena may truly reflect how little we understand about the psychological and emotional nature of physical violence and the complexities of how humans conceptualize love.”

Instead of focusing merely on how horrible Chris Brown’s actions were and how important it is that Rihanna stay away from him at all costs, we as a society should be thinking of ways that we can provide a support system for her safety, even if she decides to continue to affiliate with Brown. Instead of (solely) vilifying Brown, we should be investigating the root of his anger and violence and the ways in which we can support his growth. We could even take a page out of Rihanna’s book and work on collective forgiveness, not only for Brown, but in all aspects of our lives. Most importantly, we should be thinking of the  ways we can help ALL victims of domestic violence achieve safety and a sense of security.

I hope that we all can move beyond the 90 second news cycle, the flashy, and the sensational, so the real work can be done.  Let’s move beyond the “Cake” and clear out the cupboards. 

From Colorlines.com: 

1. We demand free quality education as a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.
2. We demand the dismantling of Bloomberg’s Panel for Educational Policy. We demand a new 13 member community board to run our public schools (comprised of parents, educators, education experts, community members, and a minimum of 5 student representatives).
3. We demand quality instruction. Teachers should ethnically, culturally, and racially reflect the student body. We demand experienced teachers who have a history of teaching students well. Teacher training should be intensive and include an apprenticeship with master teachers as well as experiences with the communities where the school is located.
4. We demand stronger extra-curricular activities to help stimulate and spark interest in students. Students should have options, opportunities, and choice in their education.
5. We demand a healthy, safe environment that does not expect our failure or anticipate our criminality. We demand a school culture that acknowledges our humanity (free of metal detectors, untrained and underpaid security guards, and abusive tactics).
6. We demand that all NYC public school communities foster structured and programmatic community building so that students, teachers, and staff learn in an environment that is respectful and safe for all.
7. We demand small classes. Class sizes should be humane and productive. We demand that the student to teacher ratio for a mainstream classroom should be no more than 15:1.
8. We demand student assessments and evaluations that reflect the variety of ways that we learn and think (portfolio assessments, thesis defenses, anecdotal evaluations, written exams). Student success should not depend solely on high stakes testing.
9. We demand a stop to the attack on our schools. If a school is deemed “failing”, we demand a team of qualified and diverse experts to assess how such schools can improve and the resources to improve them.
10. We demand fiscal equity for NYC public schools: as stated in the Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007 by the NYS Legislature, NYC public schools have been inadequately and inequitably funded. We demand the legislatively mandated $7 billion dollars in increased annual state education aid to be delivered to our schools now!

A Video of the students available is at: http://youtu.be/hXUtIFrmn18