I spent the last two weeks eating crow for the folly of hoping that the current head of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, wasn’t an idiot like his recent predecessors. That desperate delusion went out the window when he attacked USDA employee Shirley Sherrod without even bothering to watch the tape of a speech she gave to the organization he heads. Of course he was wrong. Looks like kicking a sister to the curb with little information is at least one thing Ben’s got in common with Barack Obama.

And what’s with the hyped up brouhaha about the New Black Panther Party, a bunch of posturing idiots who have no politics, no program, and virtually no organization? Besides macho BS and playing black power dress-up, their raison d’etre is apparently to divert attention from real issues, serve as the current bugaboo of the Tea Partyers and other right wingers, who cry the idiotic “reverse discrimination” and then demand that other colored people dance the Repudiation Shuffle, previously reserved for anything having to do with Louis Farrakhan. Let’s be clear about these jerks: They call themselves the NEW Black Panther Party because members of the REAL Black Panther Party, the party started by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, sued them for appropriating their name. As for theatrical menacing and strutting around outside a polling place in 2008 brandishing a billy club, please. They’re either idiots or agent provocateurs, probably both. No more time or attention for them or Ben Jealous!

It almost makes me nostalgic, but then who’s there to be nostalgic about? I’m not calling for the reinstatement of Jesse Jackson as Leader of the Negro People. It’s impossible to forgive him for his comment during the 2008 campaign that he wanted to cut off Obama’s nuts, appointing himself Massa’, overseer, and lynch mob and ending his career in 15 seconds. Now that’s multi-tasking! So here we are with a president who tries so hard not to show favoritism that he’s negligent, the bumbling, inarticulate, reactionary Ben Jealous, the PHONY Black Panthers, and Jesse’s tawdry successor, the conked hair, FBI wire-wearing Al Sharpton. Talk about makes me wanna’ holla? That’s an under-statement.

It’s all a sorry state of affairs, and saying the struggle for civil rights is over, the playing field’s leveled, and we’re living in post-racial America don’t make it so. In these depressed times all does do is justify and rejuvenate white privilege so they can gobble up not only all the courses and dessert – as usual – but the crumbs too, the ones people of color and working class people used to subsist on. It’s not the issues that’ve disappeared, it’s leadership with integrity, brains and vision. We’re living in awful, awful times, and having a cool, stylish, smart Black president, First Lady and First Family isn’t enough. We need to demand and fight for jobs, an end to both wars, quality education for all, a revived infrastructure, extension of un-employment benefits, an end to Bush’s tax cuts for the rich when they expire the end of this year, the end of police violence and abuse – not just of the privileged class but of all of us – I could go on and on and on, but then I’d be accused of ranting, or being an emasculating, demanding black women, or, heaven forbid, old school. Well, at least there were schools back in the old days.

Finally, I’ve got nothing against recently confirmed Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan, but nothing for her, either. To my mind, the President could and should have appointed a Black woman to the court. There are Black women judges, law school professors, and others who are qualified. The appointment of Kagan seems yet another example of how when we learn the rules, the rules are changed. Ditto  as well as a repudiation of the old adage many of us grew up with, that to achieve what Caucasian have it’s not enough to be as good, we have to be better. Now here comes Kagan, who’s never been a judge, appointed to the court. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I’m not a religious woman, but am I the only person unsettled by a court with six Roman Catholics and and three Jews on it? How about some religious diversity? On the same note, how about a Justice who didn’t attend Harvard or Yale?

Call me what you will, it’s time for us, WOMEN, we who have our feet in the earth and hit the ground running every day, to wake up, speak up, and take over. Or at least have a national convention in this time of tremendous crisis to decide which issues are most important to us and devise a plan of action. (I’m confident our collective priorities are deeper than Michelle Obama’s trip to Spain, Essences’s Caucasian fashion editor, Alicia Keys’ wedding, blah, blah, blogosphere.) If we don’t organize, no matter how educated and essential we may think we are, how progressively post-racial and ensconced in a privileged class that trumps racism, we’ll be relegated to an upgraded version taking care of the chill’ins and the kitchen garden – i.e. the brilliant Michelle Obama – or turned into popular cultural representations of male notions of black women, i.e. Precious, Madea, Rasputia, Big Momma, ad nauseum, or, more likely for most of us, simply disappeared. Rise up, sisters, our time has come round once again. The men have had their chance, and look where we aren’t.

Making the Third Chapter Fabulous: Prose! Yoga! Passion!, the retreat at my home on Martha’s Vineyard, runs from August 31 – September 5. Please visit my web site for more information, and be there with us virtually by following live posts and pictures from the participants during the retreat. Please check us out!

Finally, an AMAZING photograph!

Jill Nelson 8/10/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Back from vacation, during which the news I consume pretty much consists of a glance at headlines and staying abreast of what’s truly urgent – and simultaneously hoping there isn’t anything –  I’m overwhelmed by the every day “news” that I’ve successfully managed to avoid during my week’s escape. Much of this information falls into the “beating a dead horse” category, anyway.

For example: Essence Magazine hiring a white fashion director. Is anyone surprised? When was the last time black women saw Essence as reflecting and affirming a black aesthetic, as opposed to a commercial one? Let’s be honest, the magazine wasn’t a must read for years before it was sold to Time Warner, a sale completed in 2005, and since then it’s been held aloft  on the vapors of faded nostalgia or it’s-the-only-thing-out-there-for-us desperation. Why should it suddenly become the path to Black women’s affirmation and the the Land of Kumbaya once it passed from the hands of Black capitalists to white ones? Yes, it’s too bad that one of the only major fashion editorial positions a sister could reasonably aspire to has disappeared, but that’s the way of the current tough economy. Everything is tight in the current depression, oops, recession, and now the jobs that used to fall to Black people are being snatched up by hard-up Caucasians.

Ditto the USDA and Obama administration’s knee jerk firing of Shirley Sherrod after being manipulated by right wing blogger Andrew Breitbart. To call it precipitous is an under-statement. Why was it so easy for Obama to jump to defend Henry Louis Gates Jr. after his verbal altercation with a cop in Cambridge, Ma. last summer without having enough information, and equally easy for him to kick to the curb a Black woman accused of the non-existent bugaboo of “reverse discrimination” with as little, if not less, information? Black women were Obama’s early and strongest supporters, in many cases before the brothers, but where’s the big payback? Instead, there’s the folly of an elected official deserting his base, a recipe for failure if there ever was one. And no, I don’t buy it that Obama’s base was white until after Iowa, when the spin has it that Black people decided to vote for him once they saw white people would. That makes no sense, and anyway, how many Black voters live in Iowa? (What’s also sad is we have to wait for white journalists in the mainstream media to write about this before it gains any traction since there are so few black journalists working and even fewer with opinion columns. Oops, there go those formerly colored crumbs being gobbled up by you know who. My bad, how anachronistically old school of me! Who needs diversity in post-racial America? We have President Obama and a meritocracy has been achieved. Hallelujah!)

Then there’s the House investigation of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) on charges of ethics violations. And the current hearings on allegations of ethics violations of Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY). If we weren’t living in post-racial heaven, I might be paranoid. (More on them next posting)

It seems to me the only Black woman who gets bigged up by the Obama presidency is Michelle Obama. I don’t begrudge the sister anything, she’s great, but it’d be sweet if some of her props and sister love bled onto Shirley Sherrod and the rest of us, you dig? The rest of us are on our own, like a rolling stone, to quote Bob Dylan. Although we’re not even rolling, we’ve been kicked to the side of the road and are so covered with dirt, mud, and debris thrown by passersby we’re virtually unrecognizable. Way past time for us to get up, dust ourselves and each other off, and build a movement by us and for us. Ya thinks that’s still possible in this post-racial America we loves so much?

Jill Nelson 8/3/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Is it that First Lady Michelle Obama’s focus on childhood obesity has made me more aware, or are obese young people proliferating? In the last few weeks I traveled on the East Coast and to the mid-West, and was struck by the numbers of fat young people I’ve encountered along the way. That’s not to let their elders off the hook. Too many Americans of all ages eat badly and don’t exercise, and it shows, not just physically but in hidden health issues. Heart disease. Diabetes. Hypertension. I don’t like passing up sweets and fatty foods any more than the next person, but I’ve trained myself to exercise restraint in order to remain on the planet. (It helps when calorie counts are posted, too. It’s easy to pass up a piece of cheesecake when you know one slice is 1220 calories. And that’s not counting the whipped cream!) As for exercise, I’ve learned I’m not going to do it unless I find something that challenges me. The enjoyment comes from taking on – and occasionally surpassing – those challenges, pushing yourself.  Yesterday in Bikram yoga class I held Camel Pose for a full minute.  Afterward I felt as blissed out as if I’d hit the 4 digit number. It’s the challenge that keeps me going back, not the exercise itself. Pretend that exercises are a smorgasbord of delicious foods and try them until you find one that grabs you and keeps you coming back. If you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to do it, so bypass the quick fixes. And ignore the magazine covers and media hype promising you can “Lose 4 sizes in 21 days,” “Get the perfect bikini body in a month”, or “Exercise without effort,” – they’re lying.

Please email and let me know if you’ve found exercise that challenges you, and what the benefits have been. Ditto if you’re looking and open to suggestions!

Sites to Bookmark: The web site of media watchdog FAIR is always informative, provocative, and progressive.  Media Matters also keeps a sharp eye on the media, and PolitiFact tries to keep the facts in political discourse, no easy task.

And finally, after we’ve exercised, bypassed the pie, bemoaned the successful undermining of democracy by corporate media, after our blood has run cold in the face of what passes for justice in the land and the incompetence of those empowered to enforce the law, for no other reason than girls, including Michelle Obama, sometimes just wanna’ have fun…

And if you’re interested in the August 31-September 5 retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, Making the Third Chapter Fabulous, there are a few spaces left. Visit my website for information and an application!

Jill Nelson 5/18/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

I don’t care if she’s the First Lady or a bag lady, when it comes to black women and hair, you can que Spike Lee’s School Days soundtrack. Here at Nia, we created a weekly column devoted soley to our mane topic called Tressed Obsessed…need I say more to communicate how serious the subject is for us? It’s our obsession, it’s our curse, it keeps us out of swimming pools and in hair salons weekly and falls directly under shelter, food and water in the hierarchy of our needs. It’s been our inside struggle, discussions kept in the family so to speak, amongst those who live it and breathe it daily…but that was before…before a Black President and before First Lady Michelle Obama. 

This weekend a white woman, and journalist, wrote an article on the Huffington Post called First Hair, about Michelle Obama’s hair; and indirectly about the culture of African American hair, a topic we have lived with since before Madam CJ’s first salon. Apparently, it’s new and news worthy now.

On the day the Obama’s were elected I joked with my sister that if Michelle didn’t pack anything else on her way to the White House she had her head scarf, that was an inside joke and quietly my way of celebrating that someone like me was in the White House. Well what was inside has apparently made it’s way outside and into the conscience consideration of “mainstream”….

Excerpt:

“Black women, meanwhile, undergo time consuming, costly hair rituals. The First Lady is no different. Almost every week since she was eighteen, until she moved into the White House last January, Michelle visited Flowers’ Van Cleef Salon on Chicago’s Gold Coast for a wash and styling. Every six weeks during those years, Flowers straightened her hair. She continued to visit him throughout the campaign and even after the election before moving to D.C. It was Flowers who changed the flip Michelle wore at the start of the presidential race to the smooth look she now favors, because the flip was too hard for her to maintain between salon visits.

Flowers showed Michelle how to wrap her hair around her head and cover it with a scarf at night to keep its sleek shape. “In the morning, she could comb it out, and it would be nice and smooth,” he said.”

I scratched my head (and not because it’s touch up time) when I read this article. Sitting next to it was an advertisement for non chemical hair straightening by Janelle Beauty…never heard of them…obviously for black women. Meaning we were in fact the intended audience for this bit of enlightenment? I had a mixed reaction. Part of me thought great, our hair “struggles” and the need for innovation and products that serve us have now made its way to center spotlight. I’m certain beauty companies everywhere are working around the clock in their labs on solving “black hair”, issues. We will now get the time, attention and dollars devoted to us, that we so deserve, given no other race spends as much time or money on their hair as we do ( which is not a scientific fact, just my experience and wisdom). This is how progress is made…right?

The other side of me was annoyed, and dare I say slightly offended. Collectively, we have been having this discussion and living this life for years. So many black women have written books, articles, etc…that this particular “investigative” piece read like a joke to me. Not only does she write about “our” hair “rituals”, she uncovers the politics of African American hair styles and shares her personal reaction and analysis to a photo of a short haired First Lady from the seventies, as if she were writing some freshman anthropology term paper… “when I recently came across a picture of Michelle as a Princeton undergraduate sporting what looked to me like an afro, it intrigued me. I read into her hair a maverick spirit, a willingness to look ethnic in a sea of white preppies”.  It’s like some lost culture has been discovered, whose habits, behaviors and unique traits are part of some National Geographic expedition. 

Is this what it’s going to be like now, this fascination, as if we are some new species? I certainly hope not, I don’t need the frustration, I’ve spent toooo much money on my hair to start tearing out now. In this new post-Obama world, should we consider this new spotlight progress or condemn it all together? 

Read the entire article here.

February is the season for Fashion Weeks. From New York to London to Milan, designers have been shining a spotlight on creations they hope retailers and ultimately customers will want to purchase for fall 2009.

At New York Fashion Week, which was Feb. 13-20, most designers played it safe color-wise, opting for black and grey with dollops of day-glow and more somber tones like cranberry. Elements of the ‘80s and a futuristic theme came together in many collections resulting in several recurring trends throughout the week: tailored and artfully draped dresses, big shoulders, black leather separates, and a sprinkling of shine (lame’, sequins).

Some of those same trends have been spotted in London and now in Milan where Fashion Week continues there through March 3.

But there was also news of another sort from New York. Or was there?

If you read the fashion world’s bible, Women’s Wear Daily, you might have thought an important milestone had been reached: more black models were being seen on the runways.

“It’s hard to pinpoint whether that’s a result of the excitement over the new President and First Lady or the ongoing conversations about the lack of diversity in fashion,” said a Feb. 19 story in WWD.

Oh, really.

An unofficial survey of the black fashion editors covering Fashion Week yielded a much different assessment. For us, there was no cause for celebration. We saw much of the same: one or two black models in most shows.

Three models seemed to be especially popular: Sessilee Lopez, Jourdan Dunn, Chanel Iman. Not much new there, although Sessilee, as she is known, was cast much more than in past seasons. Also popular were Hollis Wakeema and Honorine Uwera.

But we actually saw less of some black models such as Liya Kebede, Alek Wek, Anjuma Nasanyana, and Jaunel McKenzie.

And in Milan so far, many shows haven’t featured even one black model on the catwalk.

Meanwhile, the hottest, new black woman selected to grace the covers of fashion (and women’s) magazines is not one of these or other black models, but First Lady Michelle Obama.

Perhaps it’s a bit early then for the fashion world to pat its collective self on the back.

-Karyn D. Collins is a New Jersey-based writer

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I can’t help but ask what the bust of a bare-chested Michelle Obama, done by sculptor Daniel Edwards, is worth?  The bold piece portrays the 44 yr old lawyer and First Lady hopeful as an “African Queen”, wearing large hooped earrings, with an afro pick comb sticking out of a “Nefertiti –esque” hairdo. Across her bare breasts is a tattoo of the American flag.

The installment was part of Daniel Edwards’s “Inspire America” series that was unveiled earlier this month, at the Leo Kesting Gallery in Manhattan, and also includes the Oprah Sarcophagus, and The Iraq War Memorial, featuring a work which depicts Prince Harry as if he had died in combat clutching the cameo-locket of his late mother, Princess Diana.
 
Often compared to Jackie Kennedy, Edwards’s goal was to create a look for Mrs. Obama that in his words “eliminated those excessive comparisons to Jackie O ” sending her to Washington with a look all her own. 

The sculpture titled “Michelle Obama’s Makeover for America” is just one of a series of works by Edwards, who is also the professor of sculpture at the New York Academy of Arts. Should this apparent nod to Mrs. Obama’s ethnic roots and position in American culture and politics be considered or condemned?

No word on if the Obama camp will pick up a few for the White House foyer.

“I stand before you as a sister.” When Michelle Obama spoke those words on Monday, August 25, when she addressed the Democratic Convention, the world shifted. With respect to her literal brother, Craig Robinson, her words immediately and profoundly touched the hearts of millions of Black women across the country and around the world. With those seven words the spirits and lives of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Florence Kennedy, Audre Lorde, Winnie Mandela, all of our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and ancestors were summoned. And each of us were suddenly illuminated, recognized and celebrated as part of an incredible community of Black women who create, maintain, and push forward.

I’m disgusted that that Michelle Obama even had to make a speech situating herself, her husband, and her family within the context of the American narrative, but given the fear of a Black president and attacks from the right, left and center, it was clearly important that it be done. It speaks volumes that this educated, confident, successful, political,great looking – did I say tall? -Black woman was able to do so with grace and with no loss of dignity.

“I stand before you as a sister.” With those seven words Michelle Obama recognized, embraced, high-fived and made visible Black women, we who are so often ignored, silenced, and made invisible by others. It was our very own Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hamer, Audre Lord, Margaret Garner, Winnie Mandela, Flo Kennedy, all our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, ancestors and selves moment. It was Aretha singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T. In positioning herself as “a sister” Michelle Obama simultaneously affirmed, recognized, and assured us that she knows both who she is and who were are, that she sees us.

We can be sure that in an Obama adminsitration Black women, sisters, will no loner be represented by right wing yes women a la Condoleezza Rice. Nor will we be an after thought, included, if at all, at the last minute when there’s an extra seat at the table and someone suggests we’d be good filler and add “diversity.” Nope. With Michelle Obama in the White House, this time around sisters will have a permanent seat at the table. It’s been a long time coming.

Just when we think we have heard or seen it all in this Presidential campaign, another media image comes forth to let us know, you haven’t seen anything yet!  This week’s cover of the New Yorker by artist Barry Blitt features Barack Obama as a Muslim, his wife Michelle as a militant complete with a gun slung around her body all while enjoying the famous fist bump in the Oval office while the America flag is burning and a picture of Osama Bin Laden adorns the walls.

The Associated Press reported The Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain was quick to denounce the cover calling it totally inappropriate adding “Frankly, I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would fine it offensive.”  Bill Burton, spokesman for the Obama campaign characterized the cover as “tasteless and offensive.”  According to Webster’s Online Dictionary, the definition of satire is: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn. 

While Barack did not issue an immediate comment on the cover, he did provide this response yesterday on “Larry King Live“:

“Well, I know it was the New Yorker’s attempt at satire. I don’t think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what? It’s a cartoon, Larry, and that’s why we’ve got the 1st Amendment.” 

“And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what’s happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

Is the cover of the New Yorker a work of art allowing 1st Amendment expression or is it another example of racist’s images used by the media to confuse the America people about the character and message of Barack and Michelle Obama.  Do you agree with Barack’s approach to initially with hold comment and focus on other important issues like the banking crisis and the economy?