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Sincerely Brooklyn is a lifestyle blog that provides cultural commentary of my life in Brooklyn. With cultural insight and perspective, this is a creative outlet for the beauty obsessed, social and political observer in constant pursuit of great food, great company and fun times. 

Ramblings

Ramblings about Solidarity

Sin

 

 

Solidarity scares me. Solidarity reminds me of the word that you say in public when you really mean something else in private. Solidarity reminds me of the recent marches on Washington to commemorate the anniversary that led to a speaking list full of everyone from Pepsi representatives to organizations that have never elected Black leadership. Solidarity triggers something very sad in my soul that brings up images of forgotten poor people. When I think of solidarity, I think of the 99% who just as culpable for the problems of the lower 5% as the top 5%.

 

Am I confusing solidarity with unity? Perhaps. What’s it all mean if we aren’t unified? Am I confusing solidarity with the things that happen after the closed door meetings? Maybe. What I’ve experienced of solidarity as of late is the erasure or censoring of poor people from the forefront of the liberation movements. When I think of those who need to be free the most, I think of poor folk. When I think of the folks who are not making room for poor folk and taking up space, are the folks in the middle.

 

Could it be that middle class folk and people who are economically moderate and politically liberal are taking up too much space out of fear that the targets of some of the problems we face could be them? I should include myself in the “them.”

I hate when Americans, especially middle class Americans, specifically declare themselves in solidarity with anyone in the Global South. It becomes almost a joke if we are not uplifting the margins of poverty. It becomes almost a joke if we are advocating for more wages in a vary narrow westernized context but we fail to advocate for living wages of the people in the Global South. Sometimes our advocating leads directly to marginalized people being over policed, underfed, and having no access to goods. We do this in the name of solidarity and jobs. But what happens when we have a job and we fight to protect that job at the expense of even more marginalized people?

I’ve watched unionized security guards advocate against policies that seek to minimize sentencing for Black men who became pawns in the War on Drugs. I’ve seen them march, hand and hand, as working class men to disenfranchisement poor men. Men who they've deem disposable. Men who they don't even include in their 99%.  I’ve seen those same security guards join with plumbers, in the name of solidarity to protest laws that would eliminate faulty pipes therefore eliminating jobs for plumbers but decreasing apartment problems for the poor. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen white mothers in Brooklyn join hands for an increase in minimum wage in New York, while paying their Black, immigrant nannies under the table crumbs. I’ve seen unionized public teachers march, write letters, yell, and complain about the parents of students they teach in poor communities. I've seen them lobby against getting fired as working class people all while refusing to teach students in poor communities they've failed to include in their 99% narrative.  I’ve seen them, in the name of solidarity, march alongside racist police officers who kill, brutalize, and humiliate the very students they claim to want to teach.

What are we, as progressives, doing in the name of solidarity? How much are we willing to advocate for ourselves as a collective group when the truth is, it's the least of these that need most of our advocating? 

Lessons Learned in 2015

Sin

 

Functioning Crazy People

All those rumors I hear about people who know people who “do it for the ‘gram” but are secretly maladjusted, just has never been something I’ve witnessed in real life. No really. I’ve heard this of course from some of my social media-hating friends but I’d never actually met those people in real life. Until I found a few of those folks in my personal offline social circle. I learned that you could be amazing and be in shambles.  You can be like, extraordinarily gifted and dope and self-destructive. This year was the first year of my life that I had to actually deal with people that even I thought were “fine” but were far from it. It took some adjusting and I had to make some decisions on whom I’d be there for and whom I wouldn’t.

 

Things Don’t Need to Be Figured Out

In 2015, I had very particular instances that reminded me that people and things don’t need to be figured out by me and I should make conscious decisions to either stick through the learning phase or dash. Life will go one without me knowing the exact next step and that’s actually ok. So in 2015, I stayed a few places I didn’t think I would because I didn't have it all figured out.

 

Friendships

I’ve said it a million times, I have incredible friends. Very thoughtful, warm, passionate, and intelligent people. I live in a friend bubble.  In 2015 though, I learned a few lessons I’d thought I’d known already about adult friendships. I learned  that you can have complete respect and love for people, and they still can kinda believe you don’t. And you can continue to have admiration for them and not talk to them again. And that’s ok.

 

Blackness doesn’t have to be sacared

I used to feel full when I hung around a lot of Black people (and still do). I’d go to Harlem, spend the day just walking around, eating soul food, shopping at Schomburg, feeling very affirmed. Outside of that weekend moment, I always felt my Blackness was slipping away from me as if I had to perform some neutralized actions in white spaces. Like not speak in slang unless I was intentionally breaking character in the workplace. Like not talking about racism, blackness, as much as I was actually thinking about it. Reserving a day or two, or even an evening to be comfortably Black no longer worked enough for me. I stopped saying I wasn’t watching ratchet reality tv, when I was. I stopped saying I didn’t catch the news, when I could barely function because a new Black person was shot by a police officer. I stopped only whispering to Black colleagues about issues of white supremacy faced daily in different spaces, on trains, and in hallways. I stopped holding it all in only to be released amongst my Black girlfriends. I stopped trying to suspend my Blackness to make others uncomfortable. And it hasn’t been easy but I feel so much better for it.

The Unfollow Button on Facebook

Who invented this and why? This is amazing! I don’t have to deal with the guilt of unfriending my family members but I don’t have to be subject to all their crazy news stories from unreliable sources and rants about child abuse. Thank you Facebook fairy!

 

What are some lessons you learned in 2015? 

Lupita and the Politics of Beauty

Sin

Lupita is hella fine but this picture is not mine.

Lupita is hella fine but this picture is not mine.

 

And now, at coffee shops and in grocery store lines all across mid-America I have to overhear conversations about how…well, you know, drop dead gorgeous Lupita Nyong’o is.

 

Lupita Nyong’o is best known for her role in 12 Years a Slave. Lupita is a Brooklyn transplant born in Mexico City to Kenyan parents. She studied at Yale School of Drama and like President Obama, she is of Luo ancestry. And yes, she is drop dead gorgeous. But why is mainstream media so surprised that she’s so goddamn fine?

You know, it’s that racist, patriarchal, capitalist (thanks, bell) unconscious attitude that frames even how we process how we see obviously beautiful people. Lupita is obviously beautiful. Seeing her shouldn’t send your mind into a surprisingly and unexpected reaction of lust. Because she was already lust worthy before you got here. The image of her deep dark skin, button nose, slim frame, short natural (most times) hair and wide eyes, is now sending imperialists into a mental juxtaposition of wanting to re-adjust their feminization of beauty (because, it’s been clearly challenged) and wanting to openly validate it in this post-racial America. Save it. Seeing the objectification of feminized celebrity for what it is would have freed you from feeling ‘some type of way’ about Lupita’s beauty.

Our unconscious commitment to mainstream media’s current polite acceptance of Lupita Nygon’o as a thing, a beautiful thing to be openly seen, has us thinking we’ve moved passed our patronizing relationship with dark skin as an occasional beauty marker. We haven’t. Beauty is so intertwined with celebrity and ones success at times it is painfully trapped in the identification of “gorgeous.” Our standards of beauty as an Eurocentric culture has always allowed us one. Or maybe a couple. We always get a Kelly Rowland. We can get by with a Tika Sumpter. We can cruise into a movie and applaud even a Gabourey Sidbie. And don’t you just love Gabrielle Union in Being Mary Jane? Our deep dark skin always conveys this dangerous superhuman message that we are exclusively strong and almost secondarily beautiful. As if the two can’t occupy the same space. Insert the instant shock.

This picture is not mine (THR.com)

This picture is not mine (THR.com)

I’m very happy Lupita is being celebrated as another example of the beauty of humans.

But I am not at all grateful for mainstream media’s shock given the ideological terrain on which they operate from is inculcated with the premise that deep dark skin is ugly. But let me just be all the way real and tell you why these jaw dropping, lustful eyes don’t bring me to tears of validation. Despite the more negative qualities we have been conditioned to associate with being of African descent, the media manages to go through phases of highlighting black as beautiful. But doesn’t it seem so forced right now? Like beauty affirmative action. Some mainstream magazines are calling it Lupita’s style. Some blogs are raving about her “unique beauty.” And some pundits are just acting like the rude tourists gawking at ‘round the way girls on subway trains. Speechless and paternalistic admiration.

Standards of beauty in this country are obviously flawed in concept and application, so quite naturally seeing someone who doesn’t actually meet that standard but appeal to you anyway sends you in to shock. Stay shocked. It sends folks into ideas of otherness, objectification, and wonders of foreignness. Lupita is not some unique, need to be gawked at creature. She is  not seeking public paternalistic validation. There are countries full of Lupitas, and Gaboureys and Tikas. THIS country to be exact. And yes, yes she is BEAUTIFUL. 

Challenging Realness

Sin

Real Sleep 

Real Sleep 

 

 

As a New Yorker, you should probably never turn to The Breakfast Club as daily therapy. But, when I’m interested in zoning out, especially on a 10 minute drive to my Brooklyn office, I turn on The Breakfast Club. One random morning, as I was already filtering through random accusations of realness, I tuned it to an uncanny conversation with former RocAFella head, Dame Dash. He lashed out “You are not a real man, if you gossip. You are not a real man if you work for another man.”

Wait. What?

Dame later recanted parts of his statement, as anyone who faces public scrutiny does from a quick sound bite of a less than stellar interview.

That however, was my last internal straw with this notion of realness. Realness is so dangerous. Binaries are so dangerous. Either/or and no in betweens are so dangerous. A single standard for how to be a man, a woman, a mother, a goon, a righteous human being is so dangerous. Not only are these notions of realness soaked in Homophobia (i.e. real men aren’t sensitive), transphobia (real women don’t have penises), body shaming (i.e. real women have curves), makeup bashing (i.e. real women don’t wear makeup), parent bashing (i.e. mothers shouldn’t be wearing that), religion defining (i.e. he’s not a real Christian if he’s sleeping with all those women) and so many other things. And these stereotypes that constitute realness for some amounts to dangerous and harmful implications for others. It can amount to low self esteem, putting people in vicious competition with those they feel opposed to, forcing many to alter their look, walk, attitude, and lifestyle.

I’ve always struggled with defining something as real. So long as I could remember, I questioned the integrity of people who put others in very narrow boxes without room for exploration and challenge. Questions of someone’s “realness” is not brilliant criticism, it amounts to a serious shade rooted in devaluation. It’s a look that says You’re fake, You’re invalid, You don’t belong here.

Realness is also problematic because it’s used to reinforce normative behavior; it defines what is worthy of respect. I’ve seen some of the most liberal amongst us claim we don’t support the heteronormative standards of life but in the same breathe declare “…he sitting at home, while she working, he ain’t no real man.” What does his manhood have to do with being unemployed? Why does he have to become a target then of your notions, deeply rooted in patriarchy, because you are unable to understand the various layers to someone’s story?

We love to exclaim the rule, not recognizing that there are more exceptions than we could ever possibly be aware of. For the sake of maturity, we should recognize that. For the sake of being kind, we should understand that there are multiple ways to be real without that compromising our stated gender, sexuality, religion, race, etc. I’m interested in, a more open, more nuanced, more boundaries-less definition of realness that supports all ways of being as authentic. Open your mind. 

3 People I'm Giving Up on in 2015

Sin

1.    The Travel Hater. What I will not entertain in 2015 is the casual acquaintance who has been toxic about the quality of experiences with international travel. Especially if you lack a passport and/or a trip pass the Caribbean islands in the past 2 years. We just won’t be featuring you in our lives anymore. I don’t want to hear another story about how what you’ve heard about Toyko. I’m not soliciting safety advice from someone who sees the world through a 13” MacBook pro. I can’t tolerate another recommendation for a place to visit that you haven’t set foot on. I don’t want to entertain thoughts from someone who is walking around with so much to say about the issues in other countries while actively living in the ruins of this one. No thank you.

2.    The Don Lemon. I’ve reached a place in my progressivism that lacks the consistency of tolerance for upwardly mobile, college educated folks who lack a basic understanding of societal, institutional, and multi-generational barriers. I’m not interested in your self-help books, your parent guides, your “I made it and so should you stories”, your Beyoncé memes, your Oprah quotes, and insistent updates with condescending overtones.

3.    The “”I Don’t Have Kids Because I’m Smarter Than You.” Girl. We are not doing this for 2015. It is my understanding that you know mothers in very unfortunate circumstances. Sorry. However, motherhood is not some big bad trap waiting to drag you into poverty. It too is a choice.

Who are folks that you’re giving up on in 2015?