13th AMENDMENT: A Black Disabled Poetic Viewpoint

17 Feb
krip-hop-painting-copy1

Painting by Carina Lomeli

My Black disabled ancestors
Weren’t free by a swift of a pen
Way back then
Black Codes, Ugly Laws & Lynchings
Dancing on slave ships
Shackles on our feat shaking our hips
Also lead many to freedom
Hey let’s talk Representative James Mitchell Ashley & Abraham Lincoln
What happened to your pen back then
What was your definition of “Involuntary Servitude?
I don’t mean to be rude
Your pen back then
Separated us by law
Ok I can understand that was a flaw
In 2017 we are still living your mistake
And it is hard to take
Decades of freak shows, circus & museums
Involuntary entertainment for the public sake
Forced to work against his or her will
Only way to make a buck was to shut up
And get into a cage
As “owners” took our income was the hardest pill
13th Amendment wrote into the US Constitution
While Black disabled people were locked up in run down state institutions
Today we think that shelter workshops of the Salvation Army are the solution
If it wasn’t abuse it was sub-minmum wage
And we must not show any rage
Cause we weren’t free so could be again locked in a cage
Separated so not mentioned
No wonder Black scholars have no comprehension
When they write, teach & create art on the 13th to the New Jim Crow
We were never the invisible nation
My Black disabled ancestors gave my generation
The foundation to write books & make art and music
Inside & outside of Krip-Hop Nation
________________________________________________________________________________
Leroy F. Moore Jr. is a Black writer, poet, hip-hop\music lover, educator, community activist and feminist with a physical disability. He’s been working in the areas of identity, race & disability for the last thirteen years as a veteran columnist for Poor Magazine, creator of Krip-Hop Nation, Co-founder of the Sins Invalid and as the founding member of Black Disability Studies Working Group with the National Black Disability Coalition. Leroy’s book The Black Kripple Delivers Poetry & Lyrics was published by Poetic Matrix Press in the Winter of 2015. He currently resides in the Bay area.

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How Trump Seduced the White Working Class By Preying on Their Physical Pain

3 Feb
Larry, a worker at Superior Coal Breaker, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Photo by Joel Anderson

Larry, a worker at Superior Coal Breaker, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Photo by Joel Anderson

By Vinnie Rotondaro and originally published on Narratively on December 21, 2016

I once took a drive on the back roads from Brooklyn, New York to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cruising 55mph from small town to small town, I couldn’t help but notice all the billboards advertising treatments for illnesses and ailments: back pain, fibromyalgia, asbestos exposure, cancer. This wasn’t the America I was used to. Bombed-out Main Streets, sad sack bars, Wal-Mart, and lots of pain pills. It was depressing.

I grew up privileged: private grade school, high school and college. I got a master’s degree from Columbia University. I have a trust fund. But I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with this other America. Somewhere deep inside, coal runs through my blood. When I think about where I come from, I don’t think of the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I think about my grandfather Angelo Rotondaro, an immigrant coalminer from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

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Situating Gratitude: Understanding the Phenomena of Thanks Discourse

27 Jan
Source: Benjamin Faust

Source: Benjamin Faust

The people of the United States have a very complicated relationship with the two most recent wars – Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. On the one hand, there is a desire to keep a political opinion about the social concept of war, and whether one supports the idea of a strong defense or not. The spectrum of beliefs and disagreements on the topic of a large standing army versus the extreme of no army at all are vast, and cause more discord than anything. However, there is also a consideration of the military personnel, and how they are perceived. Urban legends of soldiers being spit on upon their return from Vietnam has allowed us to form a cultural consciousness where we see those in the military in more sympathetic terms, either as working class individuals simply trying to find a way to become upwardly mobile, or the purist uninitiated who stand to patriotically defend a system many see for what it is. To be honest, we tend to make the soldier more of a cause célèbre than anything else; gone are the days of general perceptions of soldiers as butchers or remorseless killers. In other words, individuals in the military aren’t monsters or storm troopers as much as they are victims of Marx’s false consciousness. This widespread acceptance allows for military masculinity to be perceived as less stigmatized, and as a practice more deserving of outward respect (rather than quiet fear) (1).

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Trump’s America: Will “we” be fine? Depends on who is “we”. Depends on what “we” do.

20 Jan

Masculinities 101

dealer-of-hegemonic-masculinity-cdarcypusher-of-hegemonic-masculinity-cdarcy

Dear White Men,

This is on us. And now it’s up to us to undo it. I keep hearing us say: “we’ll be fine.” We may be shocked, devastated, disappointed, outraged but we also keep telling ourselves “we’ll” be fine. Sure, “we” will. But not all will, and not all are. If you are saying “we will be fine”, think hard about who that “we” is. Because many are not part of the “we” that will be fine. Our friends of color, our Native American friends, our Muslim friends and Latino friends, our LGBTQ friends and the women in our lives are not fine. And they are more than devastated and shocked. They are afraid of what is to come. And they will be, and already are, under attack. If you’ve ever questioned the existence of the concept of privilege, being able to say “we’ll be fine” is painful proof…

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Masculinity, Inequality, and the 2016 Presidential Election

13 Jan

By Tristan Bridges, The College of Brockport-SUNY, and C.J. Pascoe, University of Oregon

Shock, surprise, handwringing, sadness, recrimination, and analysis by social commentators, academics, activists, and politicians themselves followed the 2016 presidential election. Certainly there have been no shortage of explanations as to how a rich white man with no political experience, multiple failed businesses and marriages, who is on trial for sexual assault, whose recent claim to fame involves starring on a reality television series, and whose supporters feature bumper stickers reading things like “Trump that Bitch” will become the 45th president of the United States. As many of these commentaries have pointed out, this election is the perfect storm of intersecting inequalities: inequalities of class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, nation among others. Indeed, the anger that fueled this election reflects the conservative and populist movements across the globe in recent years.

Sociological research and theory on masculinity and gender inequality explain, in part, the success of a man who uses “locker room talk,” regularly objectifies women, calls them “nasty,” and looms over them in a way that is recognized as dangerous by survivors of violent relationships or sexual harassment. The easy answer is that men are voting for the continuation of an unequal gender system that privileges them.

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Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, and Capitalism Rule Everything Around Me

6 Jan

ouwc9khri9g-william-stittA Black femme writer and sex worker by the name of suprihmbé writes: “we deserve your money and then some for birthing your babies, for putting up with your abuse, your violence, your terror. But most of all, we deserve to live.”

It might seem more than obvious that women deserve to live, but the often-violent actions of men proves this is not always the case. There is a sense of entitlement that many men feel we have over women, one that is quite frightening. suprihmbé highlights how we, as a society, expect constant emotional labor, sexual labor, and any form of labor we can squeeze out of women for little to no compensation. The expectations that suprihmbé explores are rooted in a system that we like to conveniently “forget” exists: “Mr. Scream”: Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, and Capitalism Rule Everything Around Me. Building on the phrase popularized many years ago, “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” (), we have to examine how capitalism’s misogyny, racism, and sexism touch everything we do, even holiday shopping.

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Trump’s America: Will “we” be fine? Depends on who is “we”. Depends on what “we” do.

18 Nov

dealer-of-hegemonic-masculinity-cdarcypusher-of-hegemonic-masculinity-cdarcy

Dear White Men,

This is on us. And now it’s up to us to undo it. I keep hearing us say: “we’ll be fine.” We may be shocked, devastated, disappointed, outraged but we also keep telling ourselves “we’ll” be fine. Sure, “we” will. But not all will, and not all are. If you are saying “we will be fine”, think hard about who that “we” is. Because many are not part of the “we” that will be fine. Our friends of color, our Native American friends, our Muslim friends and Latino friends, our LGBTQ friends and the women in our lives are not fine. And they are more than devastated and shocked. They are afraid of what is to come. And they will be, and already are, under attack. If you’ve ever questioned the existence of the concept of privilege, being able to say “we’ll be fine” is painful proof of its existence: Continue reading →

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In Defense of Masculinity

2 Nov

firefighter-extinguish-fire-extinction-48125-large

When a nonbinary trans woman named Lauren told her fellow audience members that she felt “like masculinity wasted so much of [her] life,” there was a definitive weight to her words. The conversation began as part of a post-show panel following director Eric Ting’s well-executed #LoveHateOthello at California Shakespeare Theatre. I was one of the panelists for “,” a free civic dialogue with folks in the community and theatre-goers. Sikander Iqbal (cis heterosexual man of color), Ariel Luckey (cis heterosexual white man), Michal “MJ” Jones (non-binary Black trans person) and I brought our very different, but complementary voices to discuss masculinities with a small audience after the Saturday matinée of this theatrical production of Othello. Eric Ting, Cal Shakes’ artistic director, moderated the conversation.

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Call for Masculinities Syllabi

12 Oct

CSMM

Greetings,

My name is Heidi Rademacher and I am a program director at Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University. We are in the process of developing the first MA program in masculinities studies.  As this will be a brand new program, we are reaching out to scholars around the world with backgrounds in teaching courses related to masculinities.  We are particularly interested in collecting syllabi from courses taught on masculinities in the social sciences and humanities.  We would love to hear from you and receive and suggestions you might impart to support us in this new venture.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Heidi

Heidi Rademacher

Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities

Stony Brook University

On Rape as a Symptom

5 Oct

This post is reblogged with permission from And The Pursuit of Feminism.

By now, you have heard about the Stanford rape case, the shortened sentencing, seen the rapist’s face, seen that men are valued over women in such a disgusting, blatant way.

So I’m not going to talk about Stanford rape case. I’m going to talk about rape as a symptom–not a cause–of oppression against women. Continue reading →

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