Friday, August 11, 2006

Today I Feel Like...

whenever people call me whiny for feeling like a disenfranchised woman of color I want to scream.
I used to think I was paranoid. I used to think that maybe this kind of stuff just happened to happen to me and my family and my friends, but not to everyone.

  • My dad told me about the racist sergeant he had to put up with in the Air Force.

  • My mom told me about how they put her in the class for developmentally delayed kids when she came over from Puerto Rico because her first language was not English.

  • I have been denied service in restaurants more times than I have been drunk (4) in my life.

  • My brother has been stopped for driving in the wrong, or, excuse me, unexpected, neighborhood.


And now I have seen American Blackout. This film kinda reiterated the systematic disenfranchisement of voter blocks in this country. It focuses on the history of the African American vote, which is only 41 years legal, by the way. Ian Inaba of the Guerilla News Network followed Cynthia McKinney for three years as she gained office in Atlanta's district and lost office and regained it again. She recently lost the primary again after being painted as a crazy conspiracy theorist woman who attacked an officer at the Capitol.

Um...gosh. As if Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 wasn't enough fodder to make me upset, here's a film to reiterate the fact that voters are disenfranchised in the United States of America. And it's right before '06 elections which can decide which major political party can dictate for the next couple of years.

I wonder who's doing the film about the Latino vote? the Asian vote? the Native American vote? the Arab/Middle Eastern vote? the African vote? the South Asian vote?

Not to mention the whole which-faith versus no-faith vote?

I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America for so long. And I believe in the Republic for which is stands. I wonder what my next step in preserving this democracy is? I've been working to educate our youth, and that's been touching lives, a few at a time.

I want a critical mass to get pissed and do something.

Then we can all laugh while watching Team America afterwards, this time NOT to console ourselves for how the election turned out.

P.S. Voice update? I sound like Peter Brady or Julia Child, depending on the moment. Cool, right?

4 comments:

Roger Williams said...

I suppose it's a matter of political perspective, eh? An equally valid set of questions would examine why the most powerful and wealthy women in America (Condoleeza Rice and Oprah Winfrey) are black. What do the secret there? This isn't the fifties anymore.

wrki said...

Ah, but neither are examples of the average black woman in America.

Tokens do not a demographic make. It would be like saying why not every white guy in America wasn't like Bill Gates...

Anonymous said...

Roger,
That strong black woman crap is not real. Oprah, 'the strong black woman' thing is a product.That's not her really. She doesn't express herself as a black woman. Nor does she speak about the obvious pain she goes through as a black woman of industry. She has to fight corporate theives, hollywood hang-alongs. I know its tough. She is the modern day version of 'MAMMY' to many blacks. She is always telling everybody "Oh Child it gonna be alrigh". Come on. I would love for Oprah to speak it from the real one day, but if she does her career is over. Now for Doctor Rice. Well I don't have much negative to say. She too represent to most people as the Sapphire black woman with no man. I know many black people don't like her, but I respect her more than that Oprah. She won't play into that strong black woman game. Connie is doing her job. She is playing with the big boys. They might not really give her the ball, but she's there fighting probably every freak'in minute. I kinda know how it is to be in an industry full of white men who don't want you there. It wore on me...hell Connie deals with that crap on such a high level. She's awesome. She's one tough chick. Let me state for record...the strong powerful black matriarch is not a real thing. African- American woman is just that... a woman. That is some old concept deriving from slavery. That concept evolved because that demeaning system needed that in place in order to keep the structure after castrating black men socially. Black women was place in that social role within the slave community to gives them a sense of leadership. So please Roger, sir, I ask you to evolve in your thinking and do away with such foolishness.

Now, about American Black it not a black thing or a whie thing. It's about our (americans) right to vote. When one of us is deprived of that right, your rights will soon see the same fate.

Hence the title...AMERICAN BLACKOUT

Roger Williams said...

I'm not talking about Oprah or Condi's personae, I'm talking about the indisputable fact that, as of August 2006, the most powerful woman in America is Condoleeza Rice, and that the wealthiest woman in America is Oprah Winfrey.

The idea that the richest and most powerful women in America would be black would have been unthinkable less than 50 years ago, yet here we are. If that's the ceiling, what's in between?