Side eye'n since '86!

original prophet of Side Eye Baptist. World's foremost reporter on foolywang events. Just a funny girl observing crazy things. Bringing you new life.

[sermonsofthesideeye]

A Story to Tell: The Myth of Guns, Hip-Hop, and Easily Booked Raps Shows in NYC

When we talk about the Irving Plaza shooting as the catalyst for bad times, we ignore the history of racism compromising NYC nightlife.

 Wrote about gun, hip hop and the lies we tell...

[sermonsofthesideeye]

Party tonight if you’re in NYC. 

[sermonsofthesideeye]

The Work of Black Women

I’ve been watching women work all my life. As a toddler I spent half my time in another country. The few times I can remember being home I faintly remember my mom’s job as a nanny. There are pictures to prove that the TriBeCa loft and Montauk flashes I remember are true. Mostly I just remember feeling the contrast in space. I doubt back then that I realized my mother was at work but I wouldn’t say the experience had no effect.

I’ve been WATCHING women work all my life. Not in the theoretical sense but literally bearing witness. Take Your Kids To Work Day always makes think about how I’ve watched black women labor my whole life. I can say that I’ve seen every single black woman in my family at her place of work—save the psychiatrists. I’ve never spent this weird “holiday” in school but miraculously I never went to work with my mom—at least not for that purpose. There was always someone willing to take me because I was #smart and #well-behaved. (My mother was all too flattered and relieved.)

These experiences not only taught me about working but about our place in the world. The range of jobs the women in my family got as immigrants, as women, as Black people. I watched the faces of others who saw them working. And though they spent the whole time telling me that they never wanted this life for me, I had much respect for them. They taught me to the things that made me. The work that it would always take to maintain myself and to exist. Things that made sure no matter where I was, I didn’t turn a blind eye to all the people in the room. The reason I speak to hotel staff, janitors, crew while watching other humans turn into all manners of disasters. I don’t feel pride in this. I feel confusion as to why I know and others don’t.

Work makes Black women even more aware of the frailty of all things. Never mind the expectations and the necessity, inserting yourself into non-safe spaces that repeatedly demean your labor at any level is traumatic. Many times the memories of watching them work make me choke up and then it’s a cycle. I’ve witnessed what its done to their bodies. I’ve seen all the ways that working has broken their muscles and minds down. I’m aware of the labor of work. I’ve seen broken bones, bad backs, miscarriages and death. 

Yet, I also remember what they taught me about myself, about my capacity to work. They asked me to work smarter but certainly never any less. They asked me to seek happiness in work and to make it so that I was always present. They taught me to seek work that brought reward and not just obligation and in all this, they taught me to seek these same things out of life. 

[sermonsofthesideeye]

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what it is I hate about writing. Though I get the most inexplicable chill when I wanna write an idea down; doing so kills me. Sometimes it’s a joint and 15 minutes of tears to perfection but more often there’s an anxiety that dulls the high in such a way that it begs attention. I begin to worry if I write my shit down, it’s not only going to be taken from me but I’m going to be taken out of it completely. It’s a crippling fear of erasure and sadly, one more often realized than disproved.

I’d have to say I didn’t like writing shit down in high school either. But I’ve begun to explore high school as my main lesson in erasure. For most of my school life, I can probably count on A hand how many black faces I saw in any school class I participated in at any time. This was explained to me as being the nature of the class I was in—“gifted” bka smart kids aka mostly rich white kids.  I was not invited as my parents had told me; I was not supposed to be there. So mine became a life of performance: of being smart, of being black and of being girl.

The smart black girl is a myth to White America. The idea of my reality doesn’t exist to the privileged so when I show up the cognitive dissonance must be corrected. Latent racism—that “my bad, my intent” type of ignorance, continues to sound like inception because it is. So every time I would say something smart there would be two paths: either what I said made sense to a white person or it didn’t and they’d cut and paste.

Many people can get over a shady messy bitch if they know they’re smarter. I was too smart to be deterred even when it came from both the adults and kids but the method is the weapon. The way someone chooses to silence a smart black girl is an aggressive beat down that is basically the equivalent of slapping someone to death. I don’t meant figurative death. I mean imagine how hard and long you’d have to go to slap a motherfucker to. Death.  In class, any answers I gave to questions that spoke to my experience were responded to with witty slights.

These idiot remarks spanned the spectrum: A peer asking “What is Haitia?” when I tried to shed light on the slave rebellions & Haiti being left out of a white curriculum. My teacher joking to the class about a small typo on the paper she knew I’d struggled with. Worse, nobody in the class knew who it was except me.  The real embarrassment was to be experienced in silence as jokes were made about who didn’t use spellcheck. There was no space to tell them I didn’t have a computer, just a weird word processor thing and had noticed the tiny gaffe too late. It just fucking freaks me out cuz I feel like I’m being played. How could I not?

Each experience makes your hand go up a little slower, your response a little more muddled, your nerves more frayed and your propensity to lose yourself to some sort of anger guaranteed. The balance between criticism and ignorance feels like a livewire and your judgment is always walking a tight rope. Your inclusion in the conversation is touted as a privilege or worse an honor but you simply can’t see it. Are you blind or does it not exist?  Are you going crazy just because you don’t have much experience with encouragement or are you just mad niggas don’t respect you?

You blame yourself. You follow and erase your own feelings because there is no space for them. You can’t just hold them in your hands for this long ride of life. You get over it, keep grindin, do better, try harder, think first, speak less, make sure you’re right, google, double and triple check. You practice practice practice. Can’t get be offbeat, flat or a step behind. You learn double, fail half and make sure you can contort your voice to fit whatever it is it needs to be to make the fucking point. You stop speaking to anyone who understands you. You’re reading from what feels like a dumbed down script because if there is not enough time for truth, are you even telling it? And now you’ve worked all this way to be a liar, how are you being nuanced? How are you telling the story of a smart black girl? You’re not because the smarter you get the less space to be black or a girl.

Their trick is maintaining the smart. They simply erase the part that makes your story any different. We are obsessed with scientifically measuring intelligence in America and my numbers never lied. This same teacher later told me that she thought I was unequivocally the smartest kid she’d ever had. Later I considered that in the 3 years she had me as student she had never spelled Nikki correctly.  Hilariously, every time my byline appears the first thing I check is the spelling. But I am not without accountability.

My hand continuously freezes above the keyboard when asked for my voice. At this point my voice wears so much camouflage that even the realness the audience loves feels like make up. Am I being me or am I being me in the way I have effortlessly mastered they will hear me? If I can’t hear my own voice how can I make sure it’s getting stronger? What exactly am I practicing? So maybe this is the point. I’ll write for me for you. I’ll write every day. I’ll leave it here. And maybe I’ll get over this doubt. Maybe we all can.

[ethiopienne]

10 Things A Black Woman Writer Must Do: 1) Do not be a black woman writer. 2) If you come from an island in the Caribbean, that’s a mistake. The islands are not a proper place. People from places like the islands can’t write about being alienated, because how can you feel alienated in a place where people like to wear bikinis? Be a writer from England. Do not mention you are black. 3) You mustn’t write long sentences. 4) You mustn’t write about yourself. 5) Do not be abstract. 6) Do not write about race. Everyone will say you only write about race. 7) Write about race. If you don’t, they will point out that you haven’t written about race. 8) Do not be a black woman writer. 9) Do not be a black woman. 10) Do not be black.

Jamaica Kincaid, during a lecture given as part of Columbia University’s creative writing lecture series (via ethiopienne)

[sermonsofthesideeye]

A Letter to those who visit my country.

I have only one rule when you come with me to Haiti: leave all your guilt at the door. Don’t reach out of car windows handing street kids coins. Don’t take pictures of dirty kids to serve a higher purpose of making you “appreciate what it is that you have”. Haiti isn’t about you. I bring people to Haiti so they can learn about Haiti, not themselves-- for how can one evolve only through a selfish gaze. This isn’t Eat Pray Love.

The problem with going to a place that you’ve already heard everything about is that you come with a preconceived notion-- the idea that you must feel something, must experience some thing. What most people don’t realize is that feeling has already been concocted for you. Stories and movies of Haitian slums have already set your expectations. First world narratives of poverty have already eaten away at your soul leaving it so that you already feel guilt if you are not moved. That’s not what Haiti is about. The people who sold you that story feed on your belief of it so they can continue to vulture off a corrupt government and a never ending contribution of guilt money that never needs to be reported back; so people never have to know the names of Haitian kids or what exactly is they do all day.

So my rule is never ever ever sit in my country and treat my people like comparisons.  If you go to Haiti and tweet about a neighborhood based on its crime stats, take pictures with children that made you cry or made you feel “ashamed” about your privilege you’ve done nothing but make it about you. If you go and you write more brand names and talk more about organizations contributions than actual people: you’ve done nothing. People already KNOW Haiti is poor. It’s this shitty little thing where by reaffirming that narrative you remind them that black people are poor and dirty like they already believed and believe about blacks everywhere. That’s the something you’re feeling.

The country doesn’t need pity it needs economy. It needs you to tell people what you ate, what you drank, the jokes the kids told you, the fact that they love Rihanna and Drake. The fact that they think Supreme stuff is fire and make their own memes on Facebook at the Internet cafés and on their old model iPhones. That they too love J’s thought they may not have them. They ARE human. They need a shared experience, not more congratulations for the corporations that send them pity gifts but won’t walk their streets and will still speak of them through racist stereotypes so they can build their charity portfolio.

They need you to name the names of the beaches where you post your selfies and explain how beaches in Haiti are for white tourists because DUH we all live by the water on an island and tanning is not a hobby in a black ass country. They need you to tell the stories of the street vendors that sold you beer and fritaille and how the beer is still brewed in the homeland. They need people to know that 90% of the world exports can be grown on Haitian soil because its that fertile but we import everything because the government has abandoned its own people. They need the world to stop thinking of them as a place where they’re so broke they’ll kidnap you- because LOL at the idea of an American being kidnapped in Haiti. (Literally Haitians laugh at this notion.)

They don’t need to be markers for your personal evolution or your sadness or your gratefulness at having resources. They don’t need to be trotted out for pity so you can come back and throw a festival in their name. They need you to tell Young Thug and Future to come to Haiti because they love seeing them rep in their songs; that they are very much tuned into the “first world” but you do none of this.

You clap for yourselves as Americans and express shock that they are humans with a sense of community. You visit only Cite D’Soleil a slum so dangerous every single article in Haiti ever has mentioned it or interviewed someone there. A slum so “nefarious” it has its own movie—real nuance!. You rehash the narrative of oppressors rather than letting Haiti teach you how to laugh, how to cook fish, how to be a hedonist, how to drink rum, how to dance kompa, how to play dominoes, how to roast niggas in the dark while chopping down a 14ft stalk of sugar cane with a machete under the moon. How every Haitian that comes back from “an deyó” returns with nothing less than 4 suitcases of provisions. How grandmothers in Brooklyn stuff 200lbs of food, clothes, water etc and smuggle them home to drop off at Delmas, or Petionville or even an “affluent” hood like Vivi-Michel directly because they know the Red Cross and the UN aren’t going to real homes.

You spend your nights talking to white people who steal from us rather than night riding in the ghost towns covered in colorful and faded hand-painted ads around Champs Mars and visiting the fish markets at 5am for the freshest catches and the funniest arguments--swerving through the traffic of mothers trying to get kids to school and get to work. You came back with nothing and you gave nothing and if your response is “I did all these things!” than why doesn’t it show? Next time you go to my country step off the pedestal of first world pity and feel the red soil in your toes. Learn the names and stories and then tell them with no additives. Tell them not to make people cry but to remind motherfuckers that this world is big, diverse and it’s beautiful and Haiti is the most beautiful place in the world. That black kids are people, poor or rich.

They’ll say im subbing you but I didn’t mention names because it isn’t one person and again it’s not about YOU. It’s everyone who insults me by asking if I’ll be “safe” when I’m going to visit my FAMILY for two weeks. It’s every person who goes to DR but would never consider the land just across the river. For everyone who goes to Africa, India, Brazil and does the same boohoo about being shocked that poor people are good to each other. It’s about real culture not the culture you retweet but the kind that makes people say PLEASAE TAKE ME WITH YOU rather than “I just donated.” Its about real connection and humanity not a pity narrative or a moral workout session for those who have over the havenots.

I don’t go to Haiti to feel better about being an American. I go to Haiti to be a better Haitian; to show real love. All I ask is that you all do the same. Be better and do better. I’m willing to take anyone anytime. My family begs that I bring friends with every trip because my uncle says they don’t really know us, they only know the white people’s view. I’m happy to show you the real way because it’s not a vacation destination to me: it’s home. Don’t ever do that to my heart again.

[sermonsofthesideeye]

On A Day Like Today....

With each year that I wake up on September 11th I think less and less about rehashing every moment of that day but rather how that day has changed our entire world. I think about the kids who jumped up when my teacher asked "who has parents working at WTC you need to come to the office." I think about their faces as they knew their lives had been irrevocably changed. I watched terror in real time. I think about the Muslim and Brown kids in my class who couldn't come to school for days even though they were just as horrified and terrified as me; even though the kids who lost parents were also their friends and some of them had lost parents too. Even though some of them lost parents and friends and even limbs in the aftermath of this country's hateful and racist reaction. I think about how hate kept us from healing and how ten years later more kids are standing up in classes to take a phone call in the office about how their parent died overseas in war or are hiding and running from persecution because we never gave ourselves time to heal. We only rushed to vengeance. We let monsters make us bigger monsters. I think about how media now uses the word terrorist liberally to call upon that very same visceral reaction when people ask for dignity and rights and a voice. I think about how the world has been warped by a cycle of motherfuckers who think they know better on both sides and in the end know nothing. How we're still building borders and mind blocks; promoting terror and rage against anything that scares us as we talk about how much this Specific act of terror and rage destroyed so many of our lives. I do not find any patriotism in today. I don't feel in solidarity with Amerikkka nor jihad or whatever the fuck. I don't feel any solidarity with murderers. I feel in solidarity with everyone that wakes up today and thinks "it's been 14 years since my life changed and I can never go back." RIP to all the souls lost that day and since then. I keep you all in my heart somehow.

[sermonsofthesideeye]

Kanye Drunk Talk

I did a drunk Ted Talk about Kanye off the dome and then did it again because a big publication asked me to and then they didn't post it. so here we are. dont @ me.

So after mad internal debate i decided to post this because people have been asking me about it and well i recorded it so why not. 

To clarify:

-The panel i was on was called Why White People Don’t Deserve Kanye so please dont argue with me about every damn thing Kanye ever did. it’s not a thought out thinkpiece. it’s an off the dome thing done with notes after 3 henny con cranberry and 3 coronas. seriously.

- i only re-recorded this because a bunch of folks and publications were asking me for a transcription. (then they decided it was “too much”) Its NOT the same speech. that one will live with the ppl who paid for it and saw it but it’s done with the same notes and thoughts. So dont subtweet me or be lame. if you want to have discourse email me. if i dont answer you: get over it. :)

[sermonsofthesideeye]

perfect. special.

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 Three years ago Juelz and Trmmll did a podcast together and its fucking rad as hell! Happy Monday!

[sermonsofthesideeye]

My Life Wearing Church Drag

I’ve been going to church and looking fly my whole life. As an adult, I’ve finally learned how to do both at once.

my boo DD, talking about some shit very close to my heart though i dont go to church anymore. But mostly just DD slaaaaaaaaying. ugh <33333333

[sermonsofthesideeye]

What It Really Means To Be The Black Friend

/It’s a phrase as old as equality in this country— and hollow like it too—“I have black a friend…” From the minute they pretended to let us into the house for dinner it has been a point for them that we’ve accepted the invitation. Never mind that the dinner has no salt and…NVM. While we sit under the kiddie table in this country, our existence is appropriated and trotted out for all sorts of ceremonial blessings. There’s the “we need you to saaaang a little for us” ceremony that serves as a white guilt baptism—“Let us all be washed in good intentions!” The first-time-you-let-me-say-nigga-so-I-can-super-saiyan-my-whiteness-via-blackness” hood pass ceremony of privilege and flex. Even better these ceremonies only really need one black person. They are coordinated as extensions of isolation and erasure, which spins itself into a jig of having multiple black “friends”. This is all to serve as a reprint of the true jux of America: all you niggas are alike.

In conversations with people of color the problematic issue of having White Friends comes up often. Only in these truly safe spaces can one discuss the real horror of being Brad’s Best Hope and Excuse for Curing Ignorance. When you graduate from the School of Most Trusted Darkie, the first lesson you remember is silence. No matter what blackness you are adding to the White Friend’s life, they expect silence about all else that doesn’t concern them. Whatever commonality you guys share, they have immediately taken that as reason to believe you are just like them. Just think: when has a white person ever met a white person just like them that wasn’t <i>just like them</i>? A friend explained as such: “when someone has no experience with other backgrounds, anything you have in common with them immediately makes them think you obviously share the same background as them.” So here you are trapped. You were simply trying to find common ground and you’ve been latched on to. But that common ground is all you stand on. If you veer off this cliff, a world of stereotypes awaits you. The White Friend that loves you because you both enjoy giving men shit will still touch your hair and ask you to teach them how to dance. They are well aware that you are not equal because all this is the fattening of the lamb. You are loved but constantly reminded of being other--kept in a stable out back if the metaphor continues, because your true purpose is to be sacrificed.

The black friend lives as a failsafe excuse. It’s the reason you arrive at brunch 30 minutes late because you are the only friend who can’t exactly just wear bedhead out. The reason you go to dinner parties high or just a bit tipsy so you can grit your teeth through an evening of nobody that looks like you. The reason you sometimes flake out on hanging out with your White Boyfriend’s Friends. You are alone in the room. To be the Black Friend is to be an island. Your inclusion is singular to insure the safety of the White Friend. They don’t want you to have a consensus, a side of the room. You must be the standalone representative because to bring in more than one of you is to destroy the monolith. Being black is so much more complex to those who are not if it has to be explored as individuality. The White Friend does not want to go to dinner at your house or your black friends’ houses. The Black Friend’s family might be too similar to theirs--or worse, they want to come over so they can erase the idea that you are different. What if you have a snobby aunt and a witty mother? What if you have a hippie uncle or a military father? This would force the White Friend to think that maybe you are not the only example. It might mean that maybe other blacks don’t look/speak/think/live like you and that would make a lie of their eventual argument of having a black friend; a lie of the generalization.

Accepting that we are as multi-faceted as any other human life form is not impossible it’s just too risky. Your White Friend is not so dumb that they can’t imagine you are a human they simply don’t have to. The world exists to erase anything beneath the white supremacy so your White Friend can terrorize you by treating you like their other white friends. They can torture you with racist slander that they intended as a joke. They can have inappropriate conversations with you about their delusions that you are trying to steal their boyfriend. <i>(Lifehack: you are not allowed to bring up the fact that he’s the one harassing and physically imposing himself on you regularly. Your white friend will not suddenly remember that she is a feminist first.)</i> Conversations where they attack your person and spirit with passive aggressive questions about your beliefs and judgment. Your White Friend makes it so that every time you have to go anywhere with them in public you expect to be outnumbered and eventually cornered. You have to check for your wallet, keys, phone, language, and ideas when you leave the house. Will one of their friends bring up the latest police murder hashtag while gleefully playing the devil’s advocate? (You will never know if that piece of shit did it because you were in attendance but that’s the point isn’t it?) Or will your White Friend make a remark about how you are the realest/sassiest/fiercest/take-no-shittest person they know?

Shit is like Tom tryina get past all the sleeping dogs in the backyard Jerry just tricked him into. But unlike Jerry who was running to save his life, your White Friend will deny any knowledge of this setup. Their friends are a little boring/ignorant/stupid or, personal favorite, “not like them”. Yes, after all this the White Friend will ask you to absolve them via individuality. Ironic, I know but white people are the self-proclaimed kings of tragic irony. If you allow me to continue that Tom and Jerry metaphor: your White Friend won’t say it but they set up you up because they were scared too. Scared of reality and all that it means. The real danger in falling for this is that it creates a space for the attacks to come from more than just their friends. The White Friend does not have your back and that translates from not backing you in an argument at the bar to turning on you with just as much viciousness when you threaten their white space. You’ve already signed a pre-nup of silence you can’t just go around adding Blackness wherever you want. If you’re the black nerd, the black chubby girl, the light-like-us, the bro-by-us, the sassy birdmother you cannot move between them all. Once you’ve been placed there is no mobility. Every time you don’t act like what is expected of you, you are fucking up and anything that comes out of that is yours to handle alone.

So do all your white girl friends like you because you don’t call them a slut when you’re angry and they think their boyfriend thinks you’re ugly? Are they all filling a quota? There’s no part of my ego that would ever attempt to answer that for you because you’re an individual human in this world. The truth in this is only to speak to the false evidence used as manipulation; the black friend that conveniently smoothes out the conversation by providing mercy and proof with just a mention. The god-like all-access pass that works so well you don’t even need to have the Black Friend present—we believe you white man! It’s not easy being the Black Friend or any Non-White Friend honestly. From the expectation of hypermasculinity from black males, to the sexual sterilization of brown and Asian men it’s all fucked. But in America the Black Friend serves as a priority counterpoint. After all it was all the black “friends” that built this country, but we had a different title then and nobody had to make their White Friend apologize. These days, there is even reward in making your White Friend apologize to your Black Friend. It’s never really an apology just a good speech –to you only, of course—about the awfulness of it all. The Black Friend boils down to a sage stick for white guilt and everybody knows white guilt is the most boring thing in the world. A tedious magic trick involving smoke and mirrors so that white people are never looking at their own reflection, but rather they distort yours. It’s a circus act but the Black Friend still exists, cringing at chain emails and praying for the summer when they’ll #actually bring their #squad to the tailgate or finally stop getting those invites at all.

[hatzigsut]

“MLK is probably spinning in his grave right now!”

…how’d he get into that grave?

[curvedbullets]

the fucking gif usage!!!

[sermonsofthesideeye]

🙏🏽🙏🏾🙏🏿

[cordjefferson]

[pettyness-deactivated20180903]

when the dick starts bouncing around in his sweats

[missinglinc]

Spiritually connected to this post.

[sermonsofthesideeye]

yes LAWD.

[rembertbrowne]

What the hell is everyone doing? And more importantly, why is everyone doing what they’re doing?

It’s Wednesday evening and through the lens of the people I follow on Twitter–a collection of people I know well, kind of know, don’t know but what to know, and absolutely can’t stand–I’m convinced...

[nbadresscode]

[sermonsofthesideeye]

it was all good just a ***breaks into sobs**