#kenyon farrow

[inotherwordspdx]

Queer Dreams & Nonprofit Blues by Dean Spade and Hope Dector

In October 2013, BCRW and The Engaging Tradition Project at The Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School co-convened a conference called Queer Dreams and Non-Profit blues to examine the critiques emerging from queer and feminist activists and scholars about the impact of funding on social movement agendas and formations. During the conference, Hope Dector from BCRW and Dean Spade from The Engaging Tradition Project conducted interviews with many of the speakers about their analysis and strategies related to the conference themes.

These interviews were edited into 30 short videos that aim to bring these critical perspectives into an accessible format for use in activist spaces and classrooms. These videos highlight the type of knowledge production that is possible when the boundaries between activism and the academy are actively traversed.

The first three videos focusing on lessons from the anti-violence movement can be found here.

[chapelofthechimes]

As the gay community moved more to the right in the 1990s, they also began to talk about Gay Rights as Civil Rights. Even today in this gay marriage debate, I have heard countless well-groomed, well-fed white gays and lesbians on TV referring to themselves as 'second-class citizens.' Jason West, the white mayor of New Paltz, NY, who started marrying gay couples, was quoted as saying, 'The same people who don't want to see gays and lesbians get married are the same people who would have made Rosa Parks go to the back of the bus.' It's these comparisons that piss black people off. While the anger of black heteros is sometimes expressed in ways that are in fact homophobic, the truth of the matter is that black folks are tired of seeing other people hijack their shit for their own gains, and getting nothing in return. Black non-heteros share this anger of having our blackness and black political rhetoric and struggle stolen for other people's gains. The hijacking of Rosa Parks for their campaigns clearly ignores the fact that white gays and lesbians who lived in Montgomery, AL and elsewhere probably gladly made many a black person go to the back of the bus. James Baldwin wrote in his long essay 'No Name in the Street' about how he was felt up by a white sheriff in a small Southern town when on a visit during the Civil Rights era.

Kenyon Farrow, Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?

[apsamedia-uci]

this post is from 2005... it's been almost 10 years since and it's still an issue.

asian americans in hip hop: how we perpetuate anti-blackness.

thank you, kenyon farrow, for the article.

[hellothisissade]

If first-generation white European immigrants like Al Jolson could use minstrelsy (wearing blackface, singing black popular music and mimicking their idea of Black people) to not only ensure their status as white people, but also to distance themselves from Black people, can Asian Americans use hip-hop (the music, clothing, language and gestures, sans charcoal makeup), and everything it signifies to also assert their dominance over Black bodies, rather than their allegiance to Black liberation? People who now think that jazz is for everybody never think about what the process was to get jazz to that place, nor what that means for the people who invented it. This thought leaves me with one last – albeit very frightening – question: Will my niece and nephews be at a festival for Lauryn Hill fifty years from now, also standing on the outside looking in?

Kenyon Farrow, We Real Cool?: On Hip-Hop, Asian-Americans, Black Folks, and Appropriation

[so-treu]

Why are Black middle-class people never talked about in terms of neighborhood “revitalization?” I am not advocating it, as it would still have very elitist connotations, but the point is, we hear the terms revitalization, renewal, progress, and development when white people (hipsters, activists, artists, yuppies, white gays and queers, etc), immigrants, and “students” move into Black neighborhoods. Why are Black neighborhoods by default spoken of as “dead?”

Kenyon Farrow, "Notes on A Confession of A (so-called) Black Gentrifier"

[so-treu]

So for me, gentrification is not just, or even mostly about, class to the exclusion of race. The problem with this article and most progressive analysis of gentrification is that they discuss it in very limited and ahistorical terms. I would argue (and forgive me if someone else has already said this) continual physical displacement is a condition of anti-Black racism since the beginning of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, and includes massive Black imprisonment, the adoption/foster care system, lynchings done to usurp land owned by Blacks, the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in 1921, the Great Migration, urban “renewal” projects of the 1940′s-1970′s and the recent foreclosure crisis, which disproportionately affected black women homeowners. I do believe that this question of “Black gentrification” is at best a shallow understanding of what’s happening when Black middle and upper income people move to communities that have been poor and working class Black. At worst, it’s a strategic attempt to draw attention (and culpability) away from the larger forces of white gentrification and capital that much more severely impacts the ability of poor and working class blacks to remain in their communities. So if the “gentrifier” can’t be racialized as white but boils down to economics, how come the Black middle-class, despite their income drive property values DOWN when they move into white neighborhoods, even if they make similar or equal amounts of money as the whites in that community? Why is the Black middle-class not as able to live among people of similar economic status who are not Black (in large numbers) even if they so desire to? And if many Black middle-class people choose to live in mixed-income Black communities, what does that say about their experiences with racism even if they have the income and credit to live elsewhere? This has everything to do with race and less to do with income or education.

Kenyon Farrow, "Notes on A Confession of A (so-called) Black Gentrifier"

[newblackschool-blog]

Against Equality is an argument in support of those who dare to be different, a collection of essays that stand in stark contrast to an ever-growing LGBT mainstream working towards assimilation, and, arguably, cultural erasure. Never ones to shy away from a fight, the authors included in this timely collection address the trifecta of political rifts within the LGBT community: marriage, the military, and prisons.

[rekognitionoisuled]

To close, let me share a story that I think is very telling and illustrates everything I’ve been getting at here. I was living in New Orleans last year, and had just arrived for 2003 Satchmo Festival celebrating the life of Louie Armstrong. The event takes place in the gentrified Fabourg Marigny, and over that August weekend, cafes and restaurants fill with Brass Bands, Jazz and Blues artists. I sat outside a coffee shop one day listening to an incredible quartet with a group of Black people I had just met, while the cafe was filled with folks from all over, including whites, Japanese tourists and Asian-American college students. One Black woman said to her friend, “Girl let’s go in!” The other replied, “No, I’d rather stay out here. I can’t experience it the way I would if it was just us. I always feel like part of the minstrel show when they be up in it. And there ain’t no place in New Orleans where they don’t go now…” I turned to her, and gave an “Uh-huh,” wanting her to know I was there to bear witness to what she’d said, and glad she’d said it. I, too, chose to stay on the outside for the very same reason. Asian Americans in hip-hop need to consider this Black woman’s concern, as well as this question: If first-generation white European immigrants like Al Jolson could use minstrelsy (wearing blackface, singing black popular music and mimicking their idea of Black people) to not only ensure their status as white people, but also to distance themselves from Black people, can Asian Americans use hip-hop (the music, clothing, language and gestures, sans charcoal makeup), and everything it signifies to also assert their dominance over Black bodies, rather than their allegiance to Black liberation? People who now think that jazz is for everybody never think about what the process was to get jazz to that place, nor what that means for the people who invented it. This thought leaves me with one last – albeit very frightening – question: Will my niece and nephews be at a festival for Lauryn Hill fifty years from now, also standing on the outside looking in?

Kenyon Farrow, We Real Cool?: On Hip-Hop, Asian-Americans, Black Folks, and Appropriation (2004)

this entire essay is essential reading