Back to Oakland

Have you ever really felt free? Breathed a breath so liberated that you seemed to glow from within your core? That's how I feel now being back in Oakland after 12 years, 12 long, hard years of a sort of self-imposed exile in Suburbia.  My hometown came calling on me. So, when the opportunity arose this month to return, I jumped on it. I returned to the flatlands like a duck to a watery haven.

Listening to my L.A. girl Brandy on Pandora in the solitude of my own space. This is indeed an upgrade from my last few living situations. Here, there is no situation. It's just back to me. No lover, no family. Just me. The phrase "Just me" will forever remind me of the fictitious Miranda Hobbs, "Sex and The City's" red-headed and independent BFF of Carrie Bradshaw. She used the phrase quite a bit after purchasing her first Manhattan apartment. I have a slight smirk on my face, as she did every time she had a chance to utter those two words, and a coquettish twinkle in my eye when I say them too.

Not only am I the ruler of my roost yet again, but I have been blessed to be one within one of the world's secret treasures. San Francisco is "The City" while Oakland is known as "The Town." Within the entire Bay Area is found a microcosm of what has to be the closest thing to the entire world. That's how I think of the Bay Area and I'm not alone. We may not be the center of the world but we certainly possess a cultural and racial diversity other places around the country are just now beginning to experience.

 Oakland is the cornerstone of the Bay's beauty, politics and culture. Once the furthest Western outpost, the end of the line for the Transcontinental Railroad with a bustling port, Oakland was the mechanism that fed the Bay like no other city. Oakland's magic has been eclipsed by it's inner city's poverty, dismal high school drop-out stats and escalated homicide rate. If you believe, as the poetess Gertrude Stein wrote about Oakland, that there is no there here you couldn't be more wrong.

I settled in West Oakland, just a stone's throw from Berkeley and Emeryville. Over half the block is populated by Whites. Contrary to popular belief many Whites are living and thriving in the flatlands of Oakland. I think they play a part in keeping the secret that Oakland is rich so as the flatlands won't be populated with too many Concord-Walnut Creek type transplants. However, The Town's underbelly shows. Men and women out of luck walk the street along side rickety shopping carts full of recyclables and trash. Prostitutes display their wares on infamous street corners. Sirens blare twice a day on average. The Town's grit is intense, sometimes overwhelming but always reminds one of the frank realities of urban life, The Concrete Jungle. Slip and you will be swallowed by The Town.

I drive the streets, haunted by the past lives I've lived here in The Town. Born in Berkeley, my first residence was on High Street. I was welcomed by mom, dad, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who already called Oakland home. By 5, 75th Avenue was home. Back then I could walk several blocks to school by myself undisturbed as The Black Panthers still patrolled the streets. Always the baby, I hit the local roller rink  and a thriving Eastmont Mall regularly. My love affair with Hip Hop began there in The Eastmont Theater over a blue bubble gum ice cream cone and Beat Street. The screen faded to black and it was a wrap. In search of a better education for her two girls, my mother and new stepfather moved us to Union City.

By 25, after living in The City, I returned to Oakland and settled by The Lake, Lake Merritt. My extended family had long moved on to other states and the great beyond. The Town was colder and more perilous than it had been in my youth. Working in The City and living in The Town wore on me. I craved a simpler life with a slower pace. I retreated to the 'burbs were I remained the next 12 years.

This time feels different still. This time I know who I am. I'm a seasoned Sistah, self-possessed,  living for love and liberty. The road that led me back to Oakland is paved with platinum memories, I wouldn't change one. That road built this diva, for better or worse. "Things take time," my friend reminds me. As the next chapter of my life unfolds I stand humbled to be present in such a lively milieu saturated by color, art and music. I'm already making beautiful music here as my instrument, my voice, rings out to The Town. It belts out a hundred thank you's. 

Reality T.V.-- A Portal into Stolen Wealth

My DVR is my pusher. I've slowly succumb to the battle of reality broads. I lightweight love them and hate them, but I am always finding myself glued to the tube on off hours.

The gateway was a 12-hour PBS documentary series I saw (Pre-Anna Nicole Show) re-aired, "An American Family." It profiled the Louds, a family anyone would envy from the outside. Dad might have been distant but he brought in a fat paycheck that Mom doled out amongst the household full of teens with various issues and dreams in early 1970's Southern California. I watched as this symbol of the American Dream went from  happiness to divorce. It was a riveting look inside an American family and I was hooked to the docu-realism of the format. The intrigue laid not in the families material posessions but the look into the heart of a family, it's dynamics and humanity. Today's reality show has veered from this as it reflects a different era, the era of greed.

One can hardly turn a channel without coming across a reality show. Gone are the days when situation comedies were king. As much as we claim to hate reality T.V. the numbers don't lie-- we watch. Each one its own train wreck as the egos of real life players collide. I've had both men and women, gay and straight, make mention of the ladies of VH1, BET and Bravo, with or without shame.

 I don't watch them all but enough to know that it is a window into a world where the 98 percent only dream of living. It's odd to me, but many aspire to the lavishness that surround most reality celebs. The cars, homes, clothes, jewelry and vacations are enviable, but I haven't deluded myself to think that it is within my future short of winning the lottery. But if you really are on the way to building an empire, like Kim K. or T.I. and Tiny, more power to you.

My day job will never make me a millionaire. So, I do a little vicarious living while I plot for a more comfortable life, on the couch or in my bed. All type of experts say leave the television out of the bedroom as it can interfere with sleep to sex. But I'm a DVR junkie. I can't live like the "Straights." I need access to my media dope in the privacy and comfort of my bedroom, sorry. It's my indulgence. My Audi r8. That's just the way I roll.

Now, in the era of reality t.v., we can gossip ad naseum about people we do not know. Their presence or lack of integrity, fashion sense and common sense. We weigh in on the famous (many of whom are known simply for being famous) as the Ancients weighed in on the lives of gods. Apparently, it's just in our genes to speculate on the lives of others. When doing so we form bonds of commonality with our peers.

The question that arises is what type of person puts their life before camera for the world to see, warts and all? I can only surmise that it's the type that seeks immense fame. Our societal values have shifted to where the desire for fame has become a principle quest. In a recent survey of today's youth, the desire for fame has eclipsed every other value. They see lights and cameras, not discipline and education, as the way to get ahead. Who can blame them?  Fame comes with lots of money and appears so glamorous and easy, especially to a generation raised with a sense of entitlement, three to four generations removed from The Great Depression. It's ironic that during the worst economy in generations American popular culture continues to propagate the notion that easy living is easily had.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Fame is an aberration not a birthright. Millions desire it but few are chosen by the finicky club of elite tastemakers and trendsetters. I'm still trying to figure out just how the cast of "Jersey Shore" has captivated millions by simply partying and hooking up with "Guidos" and "Grenades." Their carrying-ons are laughable. However, each cast member is laughing all the way to the bank as they each become a brand, one by one.

It's tempting to envy the lifestyles of the wives, wifeys and moguls that make up our t.v. viewing. It's almost cruel for the media to tout the wealth of a few as an aspiration as it is statistically impossible for the average person to become a baller. We blame ourselves for our everyday, budget-ridden circumstances.  We are told by politicians that if we are not rich it's our fault. We internalize this and our self-esteem quietly takes a hit. We begin to believe that people with money deserve all the things that've accumulated since Reagan.

What we are glued to, in my opinion, many without realizing it, is the picture of stolen wealth. Step right up, Folks! This is where the all your raises, pensions, 401Ks and losses in the market have gone. The super rich who have gotten exponentially richer over the past 30 years due to trickle-down economics provide those in the new money club of celebrity with pieces of your stolen assets.

I'm looking at the televised lives of the rich and celebrated more and more as a portal into American greed. The product of 30 years of fleecing the American masses. Instead of watching out of adoration, I watch out of amazement that the disparities between the rich and not are so vast. The sense of entitlement most reality celebs seem to share in the way they flaunt their value for superficial things is astounding. Meanwhile, we sink deeper and deeper as a culture into a materialism that can never fill the hole in our collective soul. We have gotten the meaning of life so terribly wrong in American society and we're spreading it around the globe.

As hard as it is to swallow in the era of greed, material wealth is not the key to happiness. I didn't stutter. Now, I ain't going to lie like money doesn't make the world go around. By all moral means, get paid. However, when we are at a point where there is no such thing as enough money and notoriety we lose sight of the importance of the wealth to be had from who we truly are as human beings. The wealth that doesn't come from material things but comes from expanding the mind and spirit, being kind and giving to others and maintaining the biggest, most opulent home of all, our Planet Earth.

Sacrifice

I've been away way too long. I've been pretty busy with my new day job. Then the winter holidays hit and I got caught up in my own reveling. Now we have a new year. A fresh new start, in a sense, to work with in 2012. One thing that is certain in the new year is that life will continue to be a beautiful struggle.

A Flatland Diva makes hard, hard decisions. Life comes with questions much harder than will you drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, right? Sometimes you can have both, choose one or, on a dry night, luck down on none.

I've recently committed myself to a long distance relationship. It's not something I've ever wanted to do. However, for a special connection, a true unconditional love that could last a lifetime, I was willing to give it a sincere try. Distance makes the heart grow fond but this type of distance can make the heart lonely when your man or lady is unavailable and you are for chat and connection. This type of situation needs lots of watering or the St. Augustine grass will turn dry.

When we first ventured to do this across-state-lines thing he spoke a lot of sacrifices. The sacrifice it would take to make a relationship work with two thousand miles separating us. We would deal with each other's dirty laundry and he would not be easily moved from me.

I recently visited the object of my desire at his home across five states. The visit was a great one and I was hoping that maybe we could have something special. That Black Love, against all odds type of love. Whether or not we can make it remains to be seen. He hit a personal rough patch and chose not to tell me anything about it. Stopped communicating with me all together for a week (a week to a cyber romance is the equivalent of a month in real life). I was so hurt, confused and frustrated that I let myself get out of pocket and made some damning statements via text. Ironically, it was when I lost my mind that he finally resurfaced. He was full of apologizes as was I for my lapse in sanity.

As sorry as we both claim to be, the momentum just is not there. In actuality, I feel that I've made all the sacrifices while he has only spoken of them. I'm thinking that it may be time for this Flatland Diva to move on.

Disney's "The Help" Does It Again

The film version of "The Help" will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray December 6. I saw "The Help" last month with my girl Janet who is White. I went in with all the preconceived notions of a race movie veteran. I knew that the White protagonist would be placed at the center of the Black woman's story. She was. I was nearly positive that this story would also castrate the issue at the root of systematic White supremacy, the basis of what we call racism. It did. I knew that Janet would be touched and I would be irritated by what was left out.

                                   

"The Help" is set in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi, which at the time was one of the most segregated cities in the country. Blacks throughout the South were institutionally made second class citizens under laws of lifestyle known as Jim Crow Laws. These laws were instituted as early as 1877 through 1964, a year prior to the 100th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The film takes a fictional look at Jim Crow's end days through the eyes of Black maids and the White people for whom they cooked, cleaned and took care.

Lawd, Have Mercy

As the typical middle class White family in the early '60s had a suburban tract home, a Ford or Buick in the driveway, a black-and-white console in the living room, they also had a maid. Domestic work was just about the only work a Black woman could get in the South, condemning them to lives of servitude.

The film opens on the starring maid, Abileen, played by Viola Davis. She is a long-suffering woman. It seems the only joy she experiences besides that she gets shooting the shit with her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer) is caring for her White family's baby girl. "You is kind, you is smart, you is important," Abileen tells the cherubic child. No doubt Abilene herself benefits from the affirmation. Her White family along with many others in the community begin to build outdoor toilets for their "help" in an effort to fully carry out the 'separate but equal' tenets of Jim Crow, emphasis on the separate. This serves to undermine the dignity of the Black characters psychologically, which is the objective. Feed up with subjugation, Abileen risks her life to tell her story to the White protagonist, Skeeter (Emma Stone), whose motives for writing the book exposing the lifestyle of the South are unclear.

"Eat My Shit"

I always refuse to give too much away about a film. Suffice it to say that there is a shocking subtext to the film that deals with retribution. Part of the films begs the questions, if someone has abused their power to do all they can to put you under a bridge and block your pursuit of happiness, would you strike back with devastating force?

      
Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When Milly does what she does to Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), a persistent bigot, it is her attempt to make Hilly feel, or taste, just a little bit of what she's been treating her like for far too long. Now, that I can dig as figuratively historic. There are numerous accounts in slave narratives of all the ways Black ancestors struck back in passive aggressive ways to get their owners back for brutally oppressing and subjugating them.

Sex, The Root of All Racism
The film skirts around the real reasons why Whites instituted segregation to begin with. It was the fear of miscegenation, defined by Merriam-Webster as the marriage, cohabitation or sexual intercourse between a white person and a person of another race. The widespread belief in the inferiority of Blacks was a lie propagated to hide the fact that xenophobic White males of privilege did and still fear the loss of the material power their blood lines control and the obliteration of people who look like them through race mixing. Once institutionalized racism in the country took effect a drop of "Black blood" made a person Black and anyone considered Black found virtually no protections under the law.

Whether we realize it or not the one drop principle persists to this day. Our own president is a product of this principle. Barack Obama, even though his mother is White and he was mostly raised by Whites, grew up to identify as a Black man because in this country he could never be anything else. His father's DNA prevented him from benefiting from the White skin privilege his mother's folks shared. In short, it's the fear of a Black planet, the fear of whiteness being fucked out of existence, that made many Whites cosign on institutionalized racism. However, to hide their fear the myth of Black inferiority was propagated and the lives of Black folks have been made miserable in great measure because of this once popular psychosis.

"The Help" portrays Black characters who are completely devoid of sexuality. Absent among the maids complaints is the topic of sexual harassment by the mister of the house. The topic of sex is avoided in the Disney tradition. Odd that Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), the hateful childhood friend of Skeeter's sports a cold sore the last quarter of the film, suggesting she has a sexual past. It's ironic as she leads the initiative for separate bathroom for household domestic on the basis that Blacks carry different diseases. In the end, it is clear that she is the one who is infected.

History Shrugged

The real life story of Black women during this time is actually phenomenal. Every day Black women who became larger than life such as Rosa Parks, Fannie Lee Hammer and Shirley Chisholm come to mind. These women were the center of their lives, the center of history. Yet, in this so-called historical tale, a young White woman is injected as the gatekeeper to the Black women's freedom on the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. It's typical Hollywood revisionism.

Minny and Abileen's preacher delivers the moral of "The Help." On the pulpit he states, "Love compels us to put ourselves in harm's way for our fellow man. If you can love...you already have the victory." The historical accuracy of this love theme is the best thing about "The Help." It's the theme of cooperation through love that bought Janet to tears. However, I left the theater feeling like the real facts about racism and the real story of the Black woman's roles in history on screen has yet to be told.

Our Love of the N-Word

It's hardly a secret. Black people use the N-Word enough. Enough in the earshot of non-Black folks for them to notice. I've been on enough mass transit trains, buses and college campuses to be privy to the indiscriminate use of the N-Word by numerous non-Black youth to other non-Black youth. I've heard the term applied to Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State defensive coach, by a Black female friend on Facebook. Didn't seem to matter to her that Sandusky is White.

The N-Word, most popularly "nigga," has captured the imagination of youth of all colors since Hip-Hop trickled up. The word is itself a rebellion. Replacing the -er in the last syllable of the original N-Word with an -a took the violence and hate out of the word and melded it with a spirit of irreverence toward authority and anyone else who doesn't like it.

V-Nasty, of The White Girl Mob she formed with fellow Oakland rapper Kreayshawn, has caught some heat for her use of the N-Word in rhymes. It is obviously a way to fit in and drop street credit. A lot of white girls that come from the hood want to prove themselves in the hood for good reason. They often are reminded on the daily of a White skin privilege that they don't yet see residing in the ghettos. Kreayshawn and V-Nasty's White Girl Mob exists as a reaction to their alienation growing up White and disenfranchised in the hood.

I grew up in a home where the N-Word was taboo and never used. My mom's folks are from Minnesota and have a history of being proud race people. The word was always looked down on as a term used by the so-called lower class. However, black culture has become a matter of fashion. Hip-hop has made the word ubiquitous. It can no longer be looked at as simply a word used by those with a "lack of class," as today's richest Blacks use it.

The word is like sex, it's provocative. It's illicit in that it breaks the rules of etiquette.  It's language noir.

In a recent Tale Tela online poll, 42 percent of folks thought that rappers in general should stop using the N-Word. The rest were equally divided by those who said no, it has a whole new meaning and those who did not care. I wanted to plant my flag in the "It's Complicated" camp, but the option was not given in the survey.

I wonder, can the success of a race lie on the back of a word, a word branded in the minds of so many and  functions as a vocabulary staple?

I personally don't use the word more than five times a year. Because of the way I was raised the word doesn't just roll out of my mouth. Only my closest friends have ever heard me use it and probably without them being able to ever recollect it. I slipped once in front of a white friend and I just didn't feel right saying in her presence. That never happened again. I use it like everyone else, for effect. To connote just the right emotion about a person.

As a possible upside to the use of nigger and nigga, we come across another important n-word  meaning we never use at all. A word new to us but rooted in antiquity, Negus, has been making its social media rounds recently. Negus is an East African word meaning King or member of royalty. So, David Duke, former KKK Grand Wizard turned mainstream politician, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The N-Word tests the boundaries of free speech and good taste. The righteous seem to think that if the world is lanced from the English language we will enter through the pearly gates of the post-racial society many talk about but many know does not yet exist. The thing is that language is fluid. The word is not only a part of the American lexicon, it is woven in the fabric of it's history and cannot be easily unraveled, if ever at all.

Cyber Life

Life online is a world of discovery. We are both adult and child while surfing the net as we indulge every wonder.

Let's face it. The internet is magic. It's power for good and evil is omnipotent. If T.V.'s mystique were likened to the Smurf-hating wizard Gargamel, bumbling and full of error, the internet is Potter's Dumbledore. These days, everyone is online. Social media gives us all a public persona to do with as we want. What we create is a unique cyber imprint.

What's more interesting is how cyberspace has made us all more of who we really are as opposed to who we want to be. Most active users leave a trail. It's hard to fake your vibe. Some of us manicure our profile pages as if they were a bonsai plant. Some of us don't. But we all show a bit of our true selves online.

All hail, the almighty relationship status. I have a cousin who's newly engaged every few months. I'm single and I admit that I look forward to the day "in a relationship" can be my status, simply for the likes. They're like tiny little wrapped gifts. I just love them when I get them. But I'm no Kim K. I'm not in it for show. I want the relationship to be real.

We have entered an era in which we must redefine privacy when we've all become public figures in so far as we engage in social media to share ourselves with our friends and followers. Never have we been so accessible to so many. Not since we left the village. Even then our audience was never this broad. The possibilities for both expression and connection for the individual in cyberspace are exhilarating to the spirit and has captivated billions. It's undeniable. We crave connection. We want to plug in.

We've handed in our anonymity en masse. Some of us seek fame and fortune, some search for love and others simply want to share our voice. It's all valid here. We know Big Brother and corporations monitor our moves at will but we continue to covet the net like a moth to a flame. Will this be the death of us or will it breath new life into the collective consciousness? I'm counting on it being the later.

What's funny-ironic is our human fear of the computer. Like Dr. Frankenstein, we mistrust our own creation. It's the basis of so many of our best sci-fi film thrillers, from the early cinema classic Metropolis to 2001 to The Matrix. They are cautionary tales symbolic of how The Age of Technology and our dismal world economy has displaced millions of workers, stripping them of their livelihood; a symbolic apocalypse. Our fear of computers replacing humans has been realized. We scramble for new ways to live in cooperation with our fantastic monster.

We've decided that if we can't beat them we might as well join them, especially where there are apps involved. I've heard people describe their smartphones as best friends. Cyber life is no substitute for real living. We must strike a balance least we get caught up in the magic.

Occupied

This Flatland Diva has been struggling since the bubble busted 3 years ago. Just about everyone I know is a paycheck away from financial disaster. Where is our bailout? Instead, multi-national corporations and banks have received billions upon billions to correct a market they put in risk everyday by manipulating the market to feed their own greed. The rich have gotten so much richer in the shortest amount of time in American history. The government has assisted them every step of the way and we are at a place now where there is more disparity between rich and poor than ever.

Occupy Wall Street is right on the money. It was Wall Street that initiated what has amounted to class warfare by stealing people pensions, life savings, homes and jobs. I am so proud of my fellow citizens for finally standing up to say, "No more."

My friend, who I'll call Stacey, was simply disgusted with the Occupy Movement when we texted about it the other day. "Girl, what do you think they are going to accomplish? Corporations have been greedy. Do you think they are going to stop? This world is made on greed. So [change] will never happen." She believes that voting is the best form of political action for the masses.

I could not disagree with her more. It's been shown time and time again that change comes when people defy business as usual and get in the streets to protest. The 21st century protester has a tool that is unarguably more powerful than a musket. A shot caught on film and streamed live is truly a shot heard around the world, in real time. More repressive governments have restricted access to social media and expression because they recognize what a threat it is to their governmental control.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Age of Aquarius is in full swing. The masses are thinking for themselves, in their best interest and they are acting out in the streets, in America, land of the complacent. Nothing like it has been seen coast to coast in nearly 40 years. Everyday people have had enough of being underpaid, underemployed and thrown under the bus by our representatives and financial institutions.

Occupy Oakland has taken on an important role within the Occupy movement against police misconduct. Oakland PD has shown it's ass to the world. Their modus operandi  has been exposed as Scott Olsen, a two tour Iraqi war vet fell victim to their violence on camera, hit in the head with a tear gas canister. Olsen survived an actual war zone for years but a trip to Oakland to execute his citizen's rights got him a fractured skull and nearly killed. Oakland PD is very serious about their obligation to protect two things-- the State and private property.

Oakland PD has a long standing history of exacting brutal force on it's own citizens, particularly the black and brown. The Black Panther party was formed in Oakland as a reaction to the merciless treatment of the cops to the community. Many, from Bobby Hutton to Oscar Grant, have simply been murdered by cops who get off because the State protects it's own. The disproportionate number of traffic stops of Blacks compared to Whites is astronomical to this day in Oakland.

To police brutality and the thieving financial system, I too say no more. I am a member of the 99 percent. We have strength in numbers. We cannot allow the powerful to hijack our pursuit of happiness and that of future generations. With our numbers we must demand a return to regulations that ensure our interests are being protected.  I'm hoping with many others that the Occupy Movement is too large to fail.