QUESTIONS, FRAMING, AND IMPLICATIONS

I strongly believe in the act of asking questions. Questions are one of the primary ways by which new knowledge is yielded. But, I also know that the way we frame questions, and the implications of that framing, are also important aspects of the act of asking questions. Recently, I was involved in two situations that centered around the act of asking questions, and the implications that come from these questions. In this essay, I will explore the act of questioning, the way questions are framed, and the implications, if any, of asking questions.

Thinkers, intellects, scholars, and academics all ask questions. I would be hard pressed to find a person who did not expect anyone to not ask questions. However, I will continue to assert that the questions we ask, and the way that they are framed, are just as important as the answers we seek. There absolutely exists a need to ask questions, but there is also a need, or rather, a responsibility to be aware of the way in which we frame questions, and the implications, many times negative, that come along from poorly framed questions.

As I mentioned earlier, I have recently been involved with two situations regarding questions, framing, and implications. The first situation revolved around a question asked by Dr. Steve Perry. Perry, most known for his Capital Preparatory Magnet School, asked a question that left some feeling uneasy. Perry asked, “Given the recent FAMU tragedy, do Black groups, colleges & high schools foster brutality?” On the surface, Perry’s question looked to many to be an opportunity to start dialogue on hazing in American schools, but looking deeper we can see that the question is also problematic. The way in which the question is framed, its placing of an HBCU next to a question invoking Black brutality, has certain racist implications, in my opinion. Perry has the right to ask his question, but there also exists a right to consider the framing and implications. Would a similar question ever be leveled at White America? Would the sexual assault that took place at Penn State constitute an examination of the brutality of White America? I think not. There tends to be a need to associate individual Black acts with collective Black pathology. Perry’s question could have been framed in any number of ways, and it still would have sparked the conversation that Perry had in mind.

The second incident revolved around a question asked by “Dr. Goddess,” a well known Twitter personality. After reading an article about Kobe Bryant’s alleged sexual activities, Dr. Goddess posed a question the following question to Twitter, “If you’re a heterosexual man and you just LOVE anal sex, like, it’s your preference… are you really gay? #curious #sorry.” In my mind, this question immediately ran as homophobic, but others had different opinions, particularly Dr. Goddess. In her mind, the question wasn’t problematic because, in her own words, “I really DON’T know “gay life,” “I HONESTLY do not know. Is that okay? I mean… I am so confused right now…” Like unintended bigots before her, Dr. Goddess hid behind her heterosexual privilege, as opposed to accounting for the way she framed her question, and the implications of that question. Many people came to the aid of Dr. Goddess, and they were well within their right to do so. In their mind, questions are incapable of harboring bigotry, after all, questions are the way that new knowledge is yielded. I would disagree, however. I think it was possible for Dr. Goddess to examine heterosexuality without using homosexual as “sexual other” on which heterosexuality is examined. The question need not to have invoked homosexuality at all. For example, “If you are a straight man, and you really enjoy anal, why don’t you prefer vaginal?” Or, “What are our thoughts on anal sex as practiced among heterosexuals?” These all could have sparked a conversation on anal sex, and they would have done so without using homosexuality as a sexuality stepping stone. “I think questions, particularly those poorly framed, have a long history of racist, sexist, and homophobic implications, and this was just a continuation of that history.

There exists a very real stereotype, underlying homophobia, that insists that anal sex is a thing that gay people do. This homophobic stereotype assumes that heterosexuals do not consistently engage in anal sex, and that it is one of the hallmarks of homosexuality. Both stereotypes are untrue. I don’t know all the statistics on anal sex, but anyone who has watched a heterosexual porn knows that anal sex place, and often. Also, as someone who is gay, I know that there are a variety of sexual activities engaged in by members of the gay community. The assumption that anal sex is “gay,” also, rests upon the phallocentric assumption that lesbians do not count as gay.

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, we get a clear picture of the very real implications that arise from our poorly framed questions. In the novel, the protagonist Sethe recounts her experience with a White racist man named Schoolteacher, who used questions to support and explore his racist thinking. Schoolteacher, “measures the body of the enslaved and asks incessant, probing questions in order to control them through his knowledge of them.” I highlight this, to bring light to the fact that questions are quite capable of carrying bigoted associations and implications. Bigotry– in Dr. Goddess’ case homophobia–is often enshrined in the act of questioning.

I do not believe that Dr. Steve Perry or Dr. Goddess are horrible people, but I do think they are, both, individuals who had lapses in judgment. They asked poorly framed questions, and were unwilling to accept that their questions had negative implications. No one, not even respected thinkers, is above criticism. We all have a responsibility to exercise care and consideration when we ask questions.

Update: Here is a collection of the tweets that transpired that night. I don’t feel that it’s very cohesive, but it’s better than nothing. Judge for yourselves. chirpstory.com/li/3601

REMIXING THE BIBLE

In my mind there are many possibilities: if it were not so, I would have told you. I imagine ahead to prepare a place for you.

LOVE

1930-1965

“There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.” – Lorraine Hansberry

THE GENIUS OF TONI MORRISON

I love Toni Morrison. She is the epitome of the word genius, in my opinion, and I strongly feel that she is one of the worlds’ foremost scholars and intellectuals. I had the fortune of reading Toni Morrison Conversations this week, a book full of interviews she has given over the past thirty years of her illustrious career. Here are some of the selections I would like to share.

“Freedom is choosing responsibility.”

“The most spectacular thing in the world is my mind. To me, anyway. That’s where everything is happening.”

“If I’m able to keep learning, putting myself in a position where I can learn, those are major successes.”

“My responsibilities are to do the best work I can do and to be the best human I can be.”

“What’s interesting and compelling to me is how people do give up something in order to make it better for someone else.”

“Corruption always needs a loud voice.”

“Evil: a very simple infantile relationship with other people, which means they don’t exist, it’s only me.”

“Being evil–it’s not interesting to me, intellectually. It’s intellectually lazy. It’s simplex. It only is about more of itself.”

“Being a moral person is not, to me, just doing good deeds. It’s how to live morally in a world that may itself not be interested.”

“Thinking about good is one of the most compelling intellectual ideas there is. It has no peer.”

“You can romanticize history to such an extent that you cannot join the modern world.”

“History can be toxic if you don’t understand it.”

“To constantly learn and change is frightening to some people.”

Knowledge has been served, so eat up.

The Pecola Breedlove In Me

This essay allows me to merge my two loves, history and English, and provide a window into the life of a black gay male living in a heterosexist society. As I look back on my life, I can appreciate the role that literature, and great literature at that, played in giving me the keys to unlock the mental cage I was being held captive within, setting me on the path to freedom. The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison is a book about freedom, and it was integral in helping me release my mind from the shackles of mental slavery and self hate. The first time I read The Bluest Eye, like most student’s I appreciated the message of the story, but it didn’t resonate with me as it today, as a grown adult man, growing up in a society that seemed eerily similar to the one Pecola lived in. As a feminist, one of my core beliefs is “the intersection of oppression.” The “intersectionality of oppression,” is an outgrowth of the “intersectional theory,” created by feminist Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 and brought to prominence in the 1990′s by Patricia Hill Collins. According to Susanne Knudsen, “Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination.”  It is through that lens that I was able to find my voice in the story of Pecola Breedlove. For most people, the thought of white supremacy and homophobia being connected, never crosses their mind. As the descendants of the civil rights movement, many of us are raised to believe that it is racism and racism alone that impacts the lives of persons of color on a day to day basis. Little attention is paid to the way sexism, homophobia, or ableism are thrust upon the black community, both inside and out, and the consequences of those forms of oppression. If Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy, then my story is of a black boy growing up in a society dominated by heterosexism. Readers of The Bluest Eye are familiar with the consequences of white supremacy, and this too is often the case with heterosexism in a society, the end result can literally alter the mind of those trying to live within such an unattainable system.

“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.” – Audre Lorde

Who is Pecola Breedlove? Who am I?

Pecola Breedlove is the protagonist of the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970. In the novel Pecola Breedlove receives messages from the dominant society that white is the standard of beauty, and thus feels that she is ugly. All around her the message is being reinforced that to be beautiful she must embody the white ideal, which was blonde hair and blue eyes. In her quest for this ideal, Pecola loses her mind in the process, only acquiring the eyes she so desperately wants at the expense of her sanity.

I am not a fictional character, but the similarities between me and Pecola Breedlove are numerous. Where Pecola Breedlove thought herself ugly for not living up to the white supremacist ideal of beauty, I thought myself ugly and abnormal, for not living up to the heterosexist ideal. Like Pecola, all around me the message was straight was the way, and anything other than that was not only wrong, but even worse, sinful. Like Pecola I knew all too well growing up what it felt like to be an outsider, one who failed to live up to the ideal put forth by the dominant culture.

Absorbing the Message

The pressure to conform to the dominant ideal in a given society is one that many of us struggle with on a day to day basis. For Pecola Breedlove, it was trying to fit herself into a white ideal that was impossible for a little black girl like herself, but in spite of that Pecola longed desperately to be normal, to fit into what society had deemed normal. ” It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights–if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Reading that passage still brings back painful memories for me. I can remember being a young boy desperately wanting to be normal or what I thought was normal. I had learned early on, much like Pecola did, that I wasn’t exhibiting what I should be. For Pecola it was eyes, but for me it was the gender identity and sexual orientation that is required of young black men in the United States. As Pecola longed for her eyes to be different, I longed for my mannerisms to be different. If only I could prevent myself from switching, if only I could hold my hands in a fist, if only I were different, more masculine like the other guys who were revered for their masculinity, I too would be changed! Where Pecola longed for blue eyes, I longed to rid myself of the “sugar in the tank,” that seemed to be the source of my discontent. Sometimes the message is so strong that the receiver longing to be normal turns to a higher power for consolation. Before becoming the atheist that I am now, I was everything a well brought up Christian boy should be, despite raging internally of course. Pecola, like me, turned to prayer, “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she prayed” (Morrison 46). Looking back, I have to laugh to stop from crying at the state that I was in as a young gay boy, hoping desperately to fit into a heterosexist ideal. I too said the prayers, sending up enough “Dear God’s” to equal a mega church worth of prayers, but to no avail. Each morning I woke up and I was the same ole me, the prayer hadn’t worked, and I was forced to live another day in torment, failing to live up to the masculine and heterosexist ideal being forced on me. There’s something very tragic about a child longing to be normal, but that is the way our society is organized, and that is what most parents unfortunately instill in their children, to strive to be normal, as opposed to appreciating the abnormality or difference.

“A group of boys was circling and holing at bay a victim, Pecola Breedlove. Heady with the smell of their own musk, thrilled by the easy power of a majority, they gaily harassed her” (Morrison 65).

To survive a childhood on the wrong side of patriarchal masculinity is something remarkable in and of itself. Obviously all children are teased in school, as school children will no doubt find any fault to dwell on, but being the “faggot,” is a unique experience, if not a traumatic one. The thing about numbers is that it makes people who would otherwise not act turn into invincible monsters. Where a single person might overlook certain things, the group is sure to tap into their collective disgust, and produce something terrible for their victim. Being the recipient of harassment was something that Pecola and I both shared. I can remember otherwise happy days turning from bad to worse all because some idiot or idiots decided to bring me down for being “different.” Of all the names a young boy can be called, faggot is perhaps the worst. While other words like “nerd,” “poor,” “dumb,” etc left a young boys manhood intact, faggot cut right through to the bone, and severed the recipient of his manhood, a fine cut from a metaphorical Samurai sword. As insults go, on playgrounds around the country, none is quite as effective on debilitating the confidence of young men as “faggot.” The fact that I was smarter than them, better dressed, wealthier, and more popular meant nothing, being labeled a faggot reduced me to the lowest of the low. My straight A’s and my perfect attendance meant nothing that that point. All that I had built my reputation on crumbled in that instant, I was the butt of the cruel joke. Fortunately trouble doesn’t last always, and the moments of being shown the worst side of patriarchal masculinity would end. Although for Carl Joseph Walker and Jaheem Herrera, there only refuge from anti-gay bullying, would lie in suicide.

Pecola Goes Insane, I Go Into the Closet

In one last desperate attempt to be normal, Pecola forfeits her sanity, and only then achieves the blue eyes she so covets. “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl and the horror at the heart of hear yearning is exceeded only but the evil of fulfillment” (Morrison 204). The road Pecola traveled on ended in delusion and in many ways that was the path that I was one. I didn’t lose my mind like Pecola did, but I did begin to delude myself. There would be the time in middle school when I convinced myself that my sexual orientation was just a phase, something I could abstain from by no longer visiting the gay chartrooms on Yahoo and AIM. I’d stop talking to the guys I had met, I would finally give in to the girl in my class who wanted me to be her boyfriend, and I would emerge a heterosexual. That delusion I set up for myself lasted for about three months the first time around, and I would try it on and off throughout school until I came to terms with whom I was in the 10th grade. I could have ended up like Pecola though, as many gay men and women in this country so often do. They are those who project a heterosexual image to the world, despite being homosexual. They’re delusion becomes a coping mechanism for the heterosexist society they are forced to live in and unable to deal with. I was on that path but fortunately I got off and found my own truth, but for many gay men and women, they end up like Pecola, never finding their own truth. They get their blue eyes, there’s being heterosexuality, but it comes at the expense of their self worth and self respect, being true to themselves.

Collective Responsibility

If the product of white supremacy is a black community torn apart by colorism and other forms of racial self loathing, the product of heterosexism, is generation after generation of black gays and lesbians who hate themselves, loath themselves, and detest themselves for being that which they are. Pecola Breedlove is causality of white supremacy, and for the thousands of gays and lesbians who suffer under homophobia, they become casualties of heterosexism. Our inability to recognize or respect the differences and variety of humanity are all guilty of promoting and reinforcing the very ideology that drives the Pecola’s and I pray to be “normal,” whatever that means. One of the resonating quotes from The Bluest Eye that sticks with me comes on the second to last page. “All of our waste we dumped on her and which she absorbed” (Morrison 205). We can strive to put an end to the racism, the homophobia, the sexism, the ableism, and the classism, that we dump on our fellow human beings, and which they absorb.

“We are wrong, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too late”(Morrison 206).

Unlike, the narrators of the The Bluest Eye, we have the power to prevent it from being too late. We have the power to recognize the intersectionality of oppression, and correct our wrongness when it comes to rejecting and fighting against white supremacy and heterosexism. It doesn’t have to be too late for us.

The Master Narrative

I don’t think words can begin to express the love that I have for Toni Morrison. In terms of living authors, I would gladly put her at number one, and leave a considerable amount of space before the next slot. In terms of developing my worldview, her works have been instrumental in allowing me to broaden my worldview to a scope that I could have never imagined. From Song of Solomon, to Paradise, her work has given me the words to articulate the pain and pride that I experience in my life. As a black, gay, atheist, and feminist her work, especially her articulation of the “master narrative,” have been fundamental in me becoming the freethinker that I am. What exactly is the “master narrative?” Toni Morrison states that the master narrative is, “whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else” (feministteacher.com). Finding the strength to liberate myself from the master narrative was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life and continues to be a rewarding process with each new step that I take on my journey of personal autonomy. Living a life of one’s own choosing is the first step to rejecting the master narrative and something I have found to be very cathartic on my journey. Society will prescribe what is standard and normal, but it is not an obligation for us to accept this. Just like society told Pecola that she should covet white features and attributes, society tells gays and lesbians like me that the only acceptable way to be is heterosexual, despite bisexuality and homosexuality both being legitimate sexual orientations as well. Severing my allegiance to the master narrative is ultimately the act that separates me from Pecola Breedlove, but is the very factor that links so many of our generation to Pecola Breedlove. We may not be trying to fit into white supremacy, but there are certainly many of us trying to follow the master narrative at all costs. We only hang out with those who the master narrative tells us to hang with, we only follow the Christian religion, prescribed by the master narrative, we only major in the area of study prescribed by the master narrative, we think it necessary to fit into the sexual orientation as prescribed by the master narrative, and we even think it worthwhile to subscribe to and reinforce the outdated gender roles and expectations assigned by the master narrative. Do we realize that reinforcing the master narrative is often the key ingredient in our own marginalization? Or are we too busy in our praise of the master narrative to take notice of the consequences of such an act. There are many Pecola’s in the world, which have fallen victim to the master narrative, and speaking as someone who was a victim of the master narrative but now a survivor, I can attest that it is possible to move beyond the master narrative, to begin to live a life of your own choosing, just as I now do. You may not be like everyone else, and you may not be normal, but at least you are free! As I always say, slavery ended and I serve no master, especially not the master narrative. Demanding that element of freedom is an important lesson that I took away from The Bluest Eye and other works by Toni Morrison.

“If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.” – June Jordan

Works Cited

Feminist Teacher. “Exposing the Master Narrative: Teaching Toni Morrison’s

The Bluest Eye.” FeministTeacher. FeministTeacher, 13 April. 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Plume Books, April 2000.

“TRUST IN WHAT IS DIFFICULT”

I just finished reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I first heard about it when I watched Sister Act 2 as a little boy, and I was always interested in the book that Whoopi Goldberg (Sis. Mary Clarence) gave to Lauryn Hill (Rita Watson). After putting off reading the book for a long time I finally decided to research it and eventually read it. I will cherish the words of Rainer Maria Rilke and use them to guide my path going forward.

Almost all of his writing resonated with me but this quote in particular struck me at my core,

“Most people have (with the help of society) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us. That something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”

As a black gay man this quote really touched me. For a long time I struggled with living my life authentically and open as a gay man because I knew that it was difficult. I knew that I would have to deal with judgment and condemnation from an ignorant society. But one day, one life changing day, I made the decision to trust in what was difficult. I knew that I couldn’t keep the door closed just because I could get hurt, just because I was afraid.

I made the decision from that day forward to always trust in what was difficult because I knew that everything alive trusts in it.