Tami Roman needn't apologize nor be ashamed of her behavior.
We should be of ours.
It was over 100 degrees when I arrived in Charlotte late Friday night---a slow moving, exhaustive heat, Southern and gothic like those of my lazy, hazy childhood. The city of Charlotte simmered under the humidity of late June's heat. The skyscrapers wavered in the distance as if they were involved in some kind of wobbly calisthenics, shimmering in the waning sunlight. I was attending the opening of America I Am at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts+Culture where Tavis Smiley was the special guest. The spectacular exhibit chronicles centuries of Africans' accomplishments and tragedies in the western hemisphere, localizing on those of us in America. The exhibit is laid out in a coherent fashion that takes you from the chains shackled to African legs 400 years ago to the flight suits worn by modern African American astronauts who soared over the earth today. It's emotional and powerful.
It was over 100 degrees when I arrived in Charlotte late Friday night---a slow moving, exhaustive heat, Southern and gothic like those of my lazy, hazy childhood. The city of Charlotte simmered under the humidity of late June's heat. The skyscrapers wavered in the distance as if they were involved in some kind of wobbly calisthenics, shimmering in the waning sunlight. I was attending the opening of America I Am at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts+Culture where Tavis Smiley was the special guest. The spectacular exhibit chronicles centuries of Africans' accomplishments and tragedies in the western hemisphere, localizing on those of us in America. The exhibit is laid out in a coherent fashion that takes you from the chains shackled to African legs 400 years ago to the flight suits worn by modern African American astronauts who soared over the earth today. It's emotional and powerful.
After a few visits to the bar, I made a startlingly
realization. My friend Sharon, who invited me, works for the Gantt and had
assembled a dazzling array of guests which included artists, politicians, clergy, scientists,
celebrities and business professionals---most of them black and many of whom were women; "bougie" women dressed in designer fashions evoking big city styles alongside
"mother earth girls" in their natural fabrics and unprocessed hair filled the
space with laughter and conversation and not a bottle of Cliquot was thrown in
any direction. How is this possible that so many women of color can assemble in
tight, climate-controlled spaces and not end up punching, kicking, screaming or
cussing? By the end of the night they were dancing, happily together, under
the languid cobalt of the evening's sky. Their voices and movements were raised to the
heavens as they were each celebrating their sultry black-womaness. But this isn't possible.
Black women fight every chance they get. VH1 and its hosts of Battling
Negresses have proven that. Black women are incapable of peaceful discourse.
Bravo sparked a cottage industry on the notion that black women can cuss and
slap at the same time. Look at The Bad Girls Club. Or check
your email inbox where someone has probably forwarded you a link from
worldstahiphop.com, showcasing where young black women have spilled out onto the streets
of Chicago, Memphis, Spartanburg, South Carolina and Kosciusko, Mississippi fighting like pit bulls in a
ring inside malls, parking lots, Dairy Queens, etc. Hell, last week I was even forwarded a
video of two young women fighting in a church.
Where has this ill-manner and discomposure come from? We can't say it's manufactured. It's been boilng under the surface for some time, maybe due to, among other reasons, the anger of isolation and invisibility that black women experience. I discussed the rampant desexualization (as well as over-sexualization) of black women at the hands of Hollywood here. The sassy black woman telling-it-like-it-is has been part of cinema and television even before Jim Crow fell. These tropes usually constitute the neck-rolling sista-cum-greek chorus of the white protagonist, telling her "Girl you betta' go afta' that man," or "Oh no you di'idn't!" But for the most part, these stereotypical women were never violent. But in the last few years that sass has turned into bash. Now comes another daughter of Sheba and she's ready to tho' dubs.
There has always been a certain cachet in the black community when it comes to violence. Many resolve issues and conflicts with fisticuffs. Bitch!, inferred and inflicted in any fashion you may choose, has become the mot du jour compliment of this decade. This goes way beyond Omarosa's haranguing on the first season of the Apprentice. Black women now seem to want to fight everybody. Random men on the subway. Cashiers at McDonalds. Bus drivers. Each other. The list goes on and on. Have we so undervalued our women that now the spotlight has shone upon them as spectacle? Is participation in life only acquired by verbal and physical assault? Spartacus in Christian Loubitin battling Crixus in giant glittery earrings? YouTube, Vimeo and cellphones all record and regurgitate bad behavior to the cheers of a legion of online fans. To use an obvious pun, these videos have generated millions of hits. Literally.
Tanisha has her own spin-off show after popping off asses on Bad Girls Club. And who can forget the oh so quotable "Bitch you’re a non-motherfucking factor!" We laud and applaud these women as if they are the millennial role models of our worlds. Gone is the courage of Harriet Tubman and Daisy Bates; the righteous anger of Angela Davis and Ruby Dee; the odds-defying accomplishments of Mildred Loving and Marian Wright Edelman. It has now been replaced with the preening, cattiness of bourgeois hellions who don't fight for freedom but fight for ratings. Every woman has a right to be who she wants to be. If that's a scrapping diva then so be it. My fear is that this behavior has already slipped into the realm of acceptable behavior by many young people. And yes young white women fight too. Just look at any given episode of Maury or Jerry Springer. There's nothing wrong with a good girl fight. It has been a staple of melodrama since Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Who can forget Diahann Carroll's Dominique Devereux's "Thank You" slap-to-the-face of Alexis heard round the world in the now famous episode of Dynasty. This is not that kind of stylized choreography. It has a sense of doom and tension a raised humidity when two women of color go on the attack. The mob goes wild in the arena. Others may laugh but all I see is that awful Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Where has this ill-manner and discomposure come from? We can't say it's manufactured. It's been boilng under the surface for some time, maybe due to, among other reasons, the anger of isolation and invisibility that black women experience. I discussed the rampant desexualization (as well as over-sexualization) of black women at the hands of Hollywood here. The sassy black woman telling-it-like-it-is has been part of cinema and television even before Jim Crow fell. These tropes usually constitute the neck-rolling sista-cum-greek chorus of the white protagonist, telling her "Girl you betta' go afta' that man," or "Oh no you di'idn't!" But for the most part, these stereotypical women were never violent. But in the last few years that sass has turned into bash. Now comes another daughter of Sheba and she's ready to tho' dubs.
There has always been a certain cachet in the black community when it comes to violence. Many resolve issues and conflicts with fisticuffs. Bitch!, inferred and inflicted in any fashion you may choose, has become the mot du jour compliment of this decade. This goes way beyond Omarosa's haranguing on the first season of the Apprentice. Black women now seem to want to fight everybody. Random men on the subway. Cashiers at McDonalds. Bus drivers. Each other. The list goes on and on. Have we so undervalued our women that now the spotlight has shone upon them as spectacle? Is participation in life only acquired by verbal and physical assault? Spartacus in Christian Loubitin battling Crixus in giant glittery earrings? YouTube, Vimeo and cellphones all record and regurgitate bad behavior to the cheers of a legion of online fans. To use an obvious pun, these videos have generated millions of hits. Literally.
Tanisha has her own spin-off show after popping off asses on Bad Girls Club. And who can forget the oh so quotable "Bitch you’re a non-motherfucking factor!" We laud and applaud these women as if they are the millennial role models of our worlds. Gone is the courage of Harriet Tubman and Daisy Bates; the righteous anger of Angela Davis and Ruby Dee; the odds-defying accomplishments of Mildred Loving and Marian Wright Edelman. It has now been replaced with the preening, cattiness of bourgeois hellions who don't fight for freedom but fight for ratings. Every woman has a right to be who she wants to be. If that's a scrapping diva then so be it. My fear is that this behavior has already slipped into the realm of acceptable behavior by many young people. And yes young white women fight too. Just look at any given episode of Maury or Jerry Springer. There's nothing wrong with a good girl fight. It has been a staple of melodrama since Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Who can forget Diahann Carroll's Dominique Devereux's "Thank You" slap-to-the-face of Alexis heard round the world in the now famous episode of Dynasty. This is not that kind of stylized choreography. It has a sense of doom and tension a raised humidity when two women of color go on the attack. The mob goes wild in the arena. Others may laugh but all I see is that awful Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
But why must this be for so many black women? We all know
the cultural phenomenon of male black-on-black violence. In my short story,
Hands of Fire (included in my soon-to-be-released collection of short
stories entitled Thirteen Days of May), the protagonist, a teenage boy, comes to
terms with his homosexuality and muses about the violence that black men inflict
on each other.
I sat dumbfounded when we were sitting in the living room of Juney’s house. My father and his father talking over “the problem." My father suggested that we fight. Juney and me. The bully’s father, gushing with pride, said "yes" to the whole thing. Has the world gone crazy?! These are adults?! They’re supposed to be rational. But I had to remember: reason had no hold on a black man’s mind when his son had just been called a faggot. Maybe it’s the legacy of slavery that caused our violence. We were emasculated and stripped of all semblances of humanity. The only thing we had [left] was our fists and our dicks. We could not raise those fists to massah so we brought them down on each other. The future they gave us was, if you didn’t fuck, you were queer. If you didn't fight, you were queer. Well, I could not debate the anthropological ramification of slavery now; I was 'bout to get my ass kicked by the biggest bully in the neighborhood.
But such, typically, has been in the domain of men and maleness. It was the generalization that black men won't/don't/can't strive for the best that was the underpinning to our nation's post-segregation racism. But these female fight clubs, a.k.a. reality shows, have brought something ugly to the fore---a piston of anger and rage pummeling many of our young women. I think Ms. Roman's apology and her later talk on the legacy she leaves behind bear the fruit of how to stop this problem. America will consume both the good and bad of us individually. What we must do is to learn how to separate reality from reality tv, and educate our daughters that the consequences to bad public behavior is not your own 15 minutes of fame, but rather a lifetime of potential hurt and rejection. To use that inner strength and power to not just say what's on your mind but to say what's right is a trait that many want but few exercise.
For you, my reality show battle-cats and wannabes, remember that your legacy should not become a 'funny-but-sad' clip on Talk Soup or Tosh.0. You should leave not a bloody nose, but an open heart. And for all of us opening that email right now with the subject line: FW: Hood Fights in the CHITOWN Big Girls on Deck, let us not perpetuate, instigate, celebrate or participate in our young womens' embarrassing regression. The producers at Bravo, VH1 and Oxygen need no help doing that themselves.
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