Monthly Archives: October 2011

Daddy’s Girl Don’t Live Here

October 27, 2011

Illusions of and Desires for “Daddy’s Girl” Don’t Live Here

I wonder: What kind of person must he have been back then, to abandon twin baby girls, just as beautiful as they were strong?

My father was out of me and my twin sister’s life by the time I was three years old. The man and woman who parented me were not married. He has between eight and eleven kids, I’m not sure (and he’s not sure) though that’s the estimate. I have no memories of my biological father until around the time that I turned sixteen or seventeen years old and was about to graduate from high school. By then I was old enough to say I had officially met him.

I have been told that the reason I lack discipline and respect for men is because I never had a father figure. I have been told that somehow not having a father has handicapped me for life.

I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or say I come from a “broken household”. I think I’m the best person I could’ve become at this moment, even without a father figure. I believe my relationship with my father or lack thereof has disillusioned me to the worst of men’s behaviors. It has made me aware of how some men really are whereas other women are never so fortunate to have those blinders and rose-colored glasses lifted away because we live in a society that psychologically mind screws women into permanently judging their self-worth and happiness by how much attention they receive from men.

I’m not saying that every female is like me or should be like me and would have turned out the same way. I’m not saying I’m the greatest example of self-confidence and success. For all I know, the reason I have issues with rejection is because subconsciously I feel that my father didn’t seem to think my life was worth his involvement! Only a psychologist/psychiatrist would be arrogant enough to say, I suppose. At the same time, though my dad is humorous, laidback kind of guy, I’m not sure I would have wanted him dictating to me how I should behave because I’m a female and chasing after the gratification of his male ego by subjecting me to his whims.

Now that he has shown interest in me and wants to be there, I do feel like it is too late and that I don’t need that kind of relationship. It’s kind of the same way I feel about learning to play an instrument, personally I always wanted to play the violin: Learn it early or struggle for a while if you’re not one of those “perfect pitch-natural” types. I do feel that my father and I can be friends and if I harbor any anger towards him, it doesn’t visit me very often. I don’t even feel he deserves to be called “dad”, but I do so because I want to call him that–see, I’m so magnanimous. I think I’ve turned out just fine and I don’t need to be “daddied”.

I’ve been making it without him though more positivity and support in my life and for my mama, sister, and brother would have been welcomed.

I know we want to see healthy Black families, but we need to widen our imaginations and definitions for what that looks like and support the families we have instead of the ones we idealize. We’re so wrapped up in the kinds of [traditional and heterosexual] families that we idealize and find to be traditionally acceptable, we fail to see, acknowledge, and support the ones right in front of us.

evermore,

Ms Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in News Flash!, Reflections, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: absent father, Black feminist, deadbeat dad, Ms. Queenly, single mother, single parent household, womanist

1 comment

Raising the Low Bar: [Black] Women & Their Relationships with Men

October 20, 2011

Why is it that many Black women would rather say, “That’s how men are” when they should be saying “I don’t like that characteristic in a person, period—be they friend, boyfriend, father, husband, or otherwise”?

Many of us still insist that men should run our households, our churches, our jobs, and unfortunately our lives instead of insisting on gender equality. Women must stop relying on the idea of a man to represent sense, stability, and strength simply because he has a penis and an attitude.

I am not the first to say, nor will I be the last:

When heterosexual/”straight” Black women become unafraid and unashamed to raise their standards and stick to them, a different breed of Black man—men in general—will appear.

Some Black women are so afraid of being alone for the rest of their lives, that they make their happiness contingent upon having a love or romantic interest in their life in its most acceptable form—a man. Furthermore, they measure their worth by how many men are interested in them or find them desirable. It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of person the guy is or how he treats her, all that matters is that they both perform the actions of being in a heterosexual relationship, whether its dating, marrying, or whatever. It’s a show, like a movie or a theater performance, almost as if there is a script.

What’s the point of acting, if you’re not really happy or fulfilled?

Unfortunately, it appears to be a system of supply and demand. Once they see that we’re not buying their games anymore, refuse to play their games, and encourage everybody else not to play either, there will be change.

There are several things that women need to be remembered in relationships with some men:

1. His ideas of his manhood and the manhood of those around him (or lack thereof) will always come before his realization of his humanity.

2. You can tell a lot about someone who calls himself a man by how he treats the women around him. If he engages in disrespecting other women and allows women to be disrespected in his presence, these are warning signs.

3. [White] heterosexual male privilege is key to man’s sense of importance and power. That privilege will almost if not always come at the expense of women, children, and the non-gender conforming—that means you and everybody else.

4. Many women are too convinced of men’s limitations and potential for change to challenge them.

5. There is a difference between those males that we can build relationships with and, for lack of a better phrase, “hopeless cases”. You won’t know unless you try. Keep in mind that it’s essential to learn to discern who and what relationships are worth your time and which ones harmful to your health, most importantly your sense of self.

You are not “too strong” because you know what we want and need. You are not necessarily weak because you are trapped in or settle for relationships that do not in the end benefit or please you. But if in the end you find yourself unhappy with your relationships with those who identify as male then you have to not only consider the possibility that maybe you’ve never challenged “men” to be more for the sake of their own humanity but also deal with the fact that they may just want to be a man more than they want to be with you. Not to blame yourself but question and challenge.

In the end, we have to stop being accessories and a trophies to their performances of masculinity.

Women cannot continue to be too afraid of what they want and the possibilities open to them by accepting the behavior of those men who not only harm us but harm our families and neighborhoods with their need to validate their sense of masculinity. We cannot continue to indoctrinate boys and young men into the patterns of thinking and behavior that not only create a vicious cycle of misogyny—that is, hatred of women both latent and overt—but perpetuate the patriarchal societal practices that oppress everyone.

realness,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in News Flash!, Reflections, Writings to.... Tags: Black culture, Black men, misogyny, Ms. Queenly. Black feminism, sexism, writings to Black women

2 comments

Multicultural, Multiracial America–the new color blind?

October 18, 2011

If saying that we’re all from Africa would solve racism all over the world and lay it to rest, I’d embrace it wholeheartedly and live my life as if this was wholly the truth and more importantly–

As if everyone believes it’s true.

As I have said one or two occasions here at Ms. Queenly’s in the past, biraciality and multiraciality have not solved racism in America (in particular). If we’re all descended from the peoples of what is known today as Africa, race doesn’t matter anyway, or so science would suggest.

Not so long ago, almost everyone believed that Pluto was a planet. See what happened with that?

A lot of people don’t even believe in the theory of evolution or even that the continents used to be one land mass.

What we have to do is make it so our laws, politics, lives (*gasps*), media, and effigies reflect the fact that most of us believe that race is socially constructed, inequality is real, and that we’re really trying to combat and mitigate it’s effects for everyone. But in order to do that, we must first acknowledge and untangle how this country and many others were built on ideas of race and inequality of all sorts. Its not enough to just say we’re all from Africa anyway so race doesn’t really matter or to say over and over again that race is socially constructed. That’s not reality. A wall doesn’t “unbuild” itself because you’ve figured out that it’s manmade. Racism and other inequalities can be just as real as that wall.

Evermore,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Ms. Queenly's Response to..., News Flash!, Reflections, Writings to.... Tags: African Eve, Black feminist blog, Ms. Queenly, multicultualism, politics of ambiguity, post-racial America myth, race politics, race theory, womanism

The Presidency of Barack Obama: A Personal Reflection

October 16, 2011

As we wind down to the end of 2011 and the presidency of President Barack Obama, the first Black-identifying president (because he could’ve just said “I’m mixed/biracial” or, worse, called himself white), I reflect on not only the topic of this post but the original intent of this blog:

It is a political blog and it ain’t for everybody, which some of my visitors respect and some of them never realize. I’ve publically shared many intimate thoughts, ideas, and feelings here and it hasn’t always been easy. But what I’ve learned is that no matter what people say or how they respond, it doesn’t change what I’ve experienced and how I feel and think about it unless I should be changed.

Now I look back and think on some of my by-the-by expressions on President Obama and his term in office.

President Obama’s campaign was probably one of the most sensationalized, glamourized, and romanticized campaigns of all time. That’s what turned me off about it. Nobody seemed to listen to what he was saying or what he stood for in it’s totality. They heard what they wanted to hear and saw what they wanted to see–a Black man running for president. And when we are blinded by glamour and lip service, we run against global change and global revolution that humanizes, protects, and benefits everyone.

The only reason I am not registered voter is because, though I filled out the card several times, it was sent back to me saying there was some kind of error. Now I don’t even live in the same places I lived before when I tried…

It is only now at the end of Obama’s presidency that I see some things that make me think twice about not having offered my vote (if I could have). I sympathize with President Obama and the obstacles that he has faced and at the same time I feel he didn’t do enough and never stood for enough in the first place. The truth is that from the beginning, Obama’s political agendas and ideas didn’t match up with mine from the prospective of a Black, working class/poor, female, non-hetero conforming citizen parented in a single-parent household in this country. Almost nothing that he said spoke to me nor did I believe it would benefit me. My current predicament speaks to that understanding of his platform.

Politics is played, like a game, like justice systems, with people’s lives and it repels me to the point where, though I still have politicized opinions, I falter on this blog recently because politics is a show on the public level. There doesn’t seem to be any sincerity or realiness to it on any level.

I am now in a process of looking back and catching up, trying see the change everybody was so on about a year or so ago.

I hate lesser evil, I want a great president, but if I absolutely had to say though, I’m thinking…that I’d rather have four more years of Obama than four new years with some of these crazy ass Republicans that I’m seeing….

Evermore,

Ms. Queenly

Posted by Taviante Queens in Uncategorized Tags: Black feminist, Black opinion, Ms. Queenly, political, President Barack Obama, reflection, socio-political, womanist

Revisiting ‘White People Adopting Black Children’, posted 8/25/2010

October 12, 2011

This is in response to a comment I received on an older post, White People Adopting Black Children. I thought it best to go ahead and clarify one or two things, look for the bold. ~MsQ

Dear Dan,

I thought your comment showed that you misread or deliberately misunderstood my post on White People Adopting Black Children, so I reposted it on the blog with a response and wanted to make sure you got it, so I e-mailed it to let you know. I was being flip before but now I’m ready to give you a real answer. Please read my response below. Your original comment is in italics with my responses in between.

~MsQ

That’s all that matters to the child. Good, loving parents. Versus no family at all. Due to the numbers, that is what the choice ends up being for many children. I don’t even need to use the word “child” in the rest of this post now. I’m not saying I won’t use the word, I’m just saying I don’t have to.

–Your comment is based on the assumption that all children actually go to “good, loving parents”, no matter what their race. Your comment is also based on the assumption that most of these children actually get any such home at all. Take off your rose-colored glasses.

I’m not sure myself but I’d suggest taking a look at reported stats on how many children are actually placed in “good” homes and how many never get there at all.

I’m free to talk about you. You may be a sociologist, artist, whatever, but I’m just going to treat you like an ordinary human being. Is that OK?

–And insulting my character is conducive to what, Dan, other than making you feel better?

Let me ask another rhetorical question. What do you care more about, the child, or the “black/white communities” and their issues?

–If you think race has nothing to do with how kids grow up, the difference between having white parents and Black parents for many Black children (though not all of them depending mostly on the children themselves in some cases), you have waaay bigger issues than I initially thought. Class and location (neighborhood, etc.) also play a role in this.

The Black/white communities and its issues are very relevant to how Black children grow up. There is no way to separate the issues.

I think we’ve established what the answer to that is.

–No, I don’t think we have, Dan. So I shall continue.

You appear to be unaware of what the word “commodity” means. A commodity is something that can be traded for other commodities. Under US law “children” do not meet the definition. If you treated them like commodities you would be breaking the law. The resolution of this apparent impasse lies, of course, in your foolishness.

–As a matter of fact, I know exactly what the word commodity means. And even if I didn’t, there’s plenty of online resources to draw on.

Children are a commodity for anyone who can buy them, whether it’s with money or approval from the government or agencies. Black children have been brought by white people for five hundred years or more in the United States. Open up a textbook, Dan, it was called slavery. And many white people still believe they can buy us—this may or may not include yourself (as white, I mean). They view us as commodities, especially the “exotic” brown kids from other countries.

The original post was written in response to upper and middle to upper middleclass white people who either purchase children of color or adopt them exactly because they are children of color, particularly the white ~~scavengers~~ “parents” or would-be parents who hover over scenes of natural disasters (Haiti, for example), waiting to pick up little brown kids to so that they can boast their privileged egos and inflate their sense of Christian duty or what have you. It has nothing to do with the child and everything to do with owning them and participating in exploitation.

As a Black woman, I think it’s important for Black children to be around other Black people and involved in Black communities and the issues facing them. It can create a racial/ethnic disconnect and desensitivity of sorts when they are not.

Oh and I don’t think I’m being foolish at all, so fuck you on that one.

You must have written that mouthful of a CV some time ago, because you don’t stand for diversity. You don’t. You stand for pettiness. You stand for defensiveness. You stand for not meeting people halfway.

–No, I don’t meet bigots halfway. They take and take and have nothing to give. I’m betting I have a different idea of what diversity looks like than you do; I’m more on the social justice end of things and Black people need a lot of that. Diversity can only be fostered with justice.

And I didn’t write my “CV” “some time ago”, 2010 actually so I’m a pretty recent on my info. Graduate.

Your principle is that white people will never understand what it is like to be black.

–After attending a predominantly white university and living in a white-dominated world, yes, I believe that that opinion/principle has some merit or truth to it.

Black people probably don’t understand very well what it’s like to be white, either.

–As I said, we live in a white-dominated world. White privilege is real. Black people don’t have to be white to understand it. Many of us are punished and beat over the head with it every day.

Another day, another misguided jerk, thanks for the practice, Dan,

MsQ

Posted by Taviante Queens in Ms. Queenly's Response to..., Popular Media Tags: acculturation, adoption, Haiti, racism, social commentary, white parents black children, white privilege

Capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black

October 11, 2011

*cross-posted at Elia’s Diamonds, another Ms. Queenly blog*

Let’s get down to the words on the page.

We are a racial AND ethnic group in the United States and internationally around the world.

So why do people not capitalize the ‘B’ in Black when writing about Black characters in their books or whatever else?

I’m not really much of a grammar whiz but I wonder….

Words that are capitalized as opposed to words that are lowercase have a certain effect on many people when they see them on a page. Why is Black, as the race AND ethnicity of millions of people, treated like an adjective?

For the reason above, I see it as a slight against Black people that many writers, no matter what field, do not think to capitalize the ‘B’ in Black. In this instance, when talking about a group of people…Black is a pronoun, not an adjective, folks.

Evermore real,

MsQ

Posted by Taviante Queens in Ms. Queenly's Response to..., News Flash!, Reflections, Writings to.... Tags: Black culture, Black feminist, capitalizing Black, feminism, grammar, Ms. Queenly, racism, womanism, womanist

6 comments

the writing poor

October 3, 2011

It’s hard when you have to worry about not having anything to eat, paying debts and bills, wondering if you’re going to have a place to live or not, wondering if someone is going to help you in your time of need, dealing with depression and low spirits, worrying about a job or not having a job, being so hungry or agitated that you can’t write, being someplace where you can’t focus because you can’t do anything about the noise level, lack of motivation or faith from others, having to try and mitigate the negative effects of physical, verbal, and emotional violence/abuse as much as possible. I’d like to write all the time, but I can see why there are plenty of working class and poor people who want to but don’t or can’t. A couple of hard knocks will take the creativity right out of you sometimes.

~MsQ

Posted by Taviante Queens in News Flash!, Reflections, True Story, Writings to.... Tags: Black feminism, Black feminist, cradle of chicadas, Creative Writing, feminist, Ms. Queenly, notes on writing, reflections, womanist, writing tips

Monthly Archives: October 2011

Daddy’s Girl Don’t Live Here

Raising the Low Bar: [Black] Women & Their Relationships with Men

Multicultural, Multiracial America–the new color blind?

The Presidency of Barack Obama: A Personal Reflection

Capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black

the writing poor

Ms. Queenly’s Blog

Primary Colors

Copyright

Email Subscription

Queenly Things

Search Me

Blogroll

Archives

Follow “Ms. Queenly's Blog”