I am content...

always to have Tina Fey give the last word on issues of sexism in the media.



"Ask this one about dinosaurs."

Bill Clinton is blacker than me

I am having this very interesting discussion with my stepmother and sister. My stepmother is the child of a Black serviceman and his Japanese war bride, who loves her some sashimi but is basically a "race woman."

My sister and I are what happens when you let hillbillies and foreigners into your college. Our father is a Jamaican immigrant with Black slaves and Scottish plantation owners and Chinese merchants all in there. Our mother is of many generations of Irish, Germans and Dutch in Appalachia.

I don't know but I imagine my parents related to each other as collegians, as bohemians in a shrinking, post-race world. I think that Black Power happened to them, that it made my father feel that he had a birthright he was neglecting, that our racial identity became a turf issue for them, and that his pursuit of that path eventually killed their marriage.

We were talking about how, even though we both know the politics of standing up and being counted, it feels inauthentic to be as pale as we are and insist on being Black. My sister was saying she felt "limited" in her ability to relate. My stepmother was kind of dismissing it, like oh, we're just people. But everybody knows that's not the half of it.

Black is not a birthright. It's a club. And the shibboleths -- the secret passwords -- change every day. Skin color is only a teensy part of it. I can hang A LITTLE BIT. I have read my Angela Davis and my Toni Morrison and I AM very politically involved and I DO have an extensive network of Black professionals (IF I namecheck my Dad). But even by that calculus, Bill Clinton is Blacker than me.

My sister, who never insisted on a Black identity, always could and still can hang more than me. Could dance, had more Black friends, boyfriends,...

In Columbia, there was enough of a critical mass of iconoclastic Black people, that you could kinda point to them and say, y'know, like that -- I'm Black like them. Plus, everybody knew me.

Anywhere else, it's not my skin color but my behavior that makes people assume I'm white. I could be ebony and I'd still be a Unitarian. I still wouldn't know the catch phrases circulating on the HBC's. I still wouldn't see the relevance of Terry MacMillan or Tyler Perry. I still wouldn't find comedians funny who talk about how their momma used to slap them around. I'd still have a lot of gay friends. I'd still shop at Goodwill.

Well, and I'd still be married to a white guy. Because the other thing I noticed is that a lot of people cared about what my deal was racially when I was "in play." When it's like, are the Black women going to hate me if I date you. Now that I'm married, who cares? That draft is over and I'm under contract.

Interesting race/ gender intersection there. That you could have a maiden racial identity like a maiden name.

Flower in the Attic

Girl's BFF in the neighborhood is a precocious, home-schooled little blossom. She watches the news on pretty much a constant feed and doesn't see the sun. Sometimes she goes on jags where she calls our house a lot. For instance, she was beside herself when Girl was getting ready for her trip to China. It was during all of those lead paint recalls and she was convinced the Chinese were trying to kill us.

She called just now and asked if she'd reached Hilary Clinton's headquarters. Something wicked in me made me give the child the number. Let them hear her theories on campaign strategy. "I like that Obama," she says, "But I worry that he just doesn't have enough experience." All seven and-a-half.

Hillary to speak in Laveen

Hillary Clinton will be conducting a free town hall meeting re: her economic stimulus package at our local high school at 7:30 p.m. tonight. People interested in attending are encouraged to RSVP here.

They've lost their ever-lovin' minds

So, my beloved called me at work today to vent his spleen about politics. This warms my heart, as I love being that for him -- Just someone to shake your head with. They’ve lost their ever-lovin’ minds, baby. It’s just you and me.

What had his goat was this brouhaha over Bill Richardson on the Logo panel. I didn’t hear it, but apparently Richardson said something about something being a choice and then spent the rest of the panel trying to explain that he didn’t mean that homosexuality is chosen. And now, it appears that the entire gay community has written him off. This reaction is infuriating, because, given that not one Republican even accepted the invitation to a Logo panel, this should be one of those “You had me at ‘Hello’” moments, where the mere act of attending the panel at all shows you where he stands.

Not to mention that Bill Richardson’s actions speak louder than his words, because he is the only one of any of the candidates who has ever had to do any meaningful wrangling for gay rights (not counting what role Clinton had in Bill’s disastrous “Don’t ask; don’t tell” debacle). As governor, he actually fought for civil unions. In New Mexico. Sheesh. But anyway, I don’t really want to blog about politics.

The reason I bring it up is this. It makes me sad for couples who seriously disagree about politics. I don’t mean like a good knock-down drag-out every once in a while -- “How can you be such a Bolshevik?”/ “How can you be such a defender of the machine?” That’s totally fun. I mean, like disagree about deep-seeded moral commitments or even about whether politics is something to talk about at the dinner table. How do they do it?

We’re not even such big pols, but I get a lot out of living in a house where snarky comments like, “Gosh, I get such a good feeling from supporting someone as ideologically pure as Kucinich!” Or “Could Obama maybe get some foreign policy experience before he declares war on Pakistan?” are invitations to discussion. I know in a lot of households there would be this uncomfortable, “There you go again.”