Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (9 page)

With such great strides in research, some of the women in my HIV community decided we were now ready to stand up and have our voices heard regarding the HIV issues that affected the women and children in our community. We laid down the criteria for our mission and presented it to a leading HIV/AIDS agency in town. We wanted to convince the government and nonprofit contributors that there was a lack of funding for services geared toward women and children, such as childcare, transportation and effective treatment programs that specifically focused on the medical and psychological welfare of our families.

The agency believed in our mission and agreed to take us under their umbrella. The HIV Women’s Task Force was born. Besides providing our group with a place to hold our meetings, the agency also gave us opportunities to go into the community and talk about our experiences living with HIV. I was honored to be elected to serve on the agency’s executive board of directors. In that capacity I spoke to forums across our area about the changing face of HIV/AIDS. Public speaking was important to the community, but it also served as a healing method for all my years of silence. It empowered my spirit and helped me overcome my fear of rejection and shame.

 

While these wonderful things were happening in the community, my home life had turned into a disaster. Jay had always been a private person, and I felt like he resented my public speaking engagements. Despite the distance growing between us, I continued my community service work. A number of my engagements took me to the state university and the local community college. I listened to students and encouraged them to practice safe sex and be tested regularly. At about this time I also began to have a strong desire to return to school. In one of my engagements I expressed a wish to someday pursue an education. After my speech a man came up to me and handed me his business card. He told me to give him a call and he would help me pursue my dream. I looked at the card and realized that he was a financial aid officer from the state university.

Jay, however, seemed reluctant to support my idea. He felt we were surviving a major event in our lives, and now it was time to sit back and have a normal lifestyle. Life was crazy enough with my community activism. I was determined not to let his position get me down. I made an appointment with the financial aid officer and we began the process of applying for financial aid for college. A few weeks later I received my acceptance letter from the university.

Jay and I went into marriage counseling, but despite our efforts, we decided to separate three months into my first semester of college. I felt like my world had fallen apart, but I also understood that perhaps we had been through too many trials to ever completely heal our relationship. I really wished that we were able to move past the sad times in our lives and just be happy again. It was hard to imagine what life would be like without the man who I still so desperately loved. Jay, Alex and I were supposed to be a family. This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out, but I couldn’t be angry with Jay for blaming me for this whole mess. I made a vow that I wouldn’t cause him any more pain. I was determined to keep me and Alex healthy and to try to be the best mother I could.

The following month, Alex and I moved into our own apartment and began an adventure that would prove to be an incredible growing experience. I enrolled Alex in preschool and began working part time as a waitress to help make ends meet. Jay and I decided on joint custody, and he agreed to keep Alex on the weekends so that I could work and still have time to study (and some spare time to sleep!). I was thankful for this arrangement.

When I began my first year, I had personal reasons for wanting a college degree. I believed that I was given a second chance and I wanted to make the most of it. I decided on an English major, with the intent of possibly becoming a teacher someday. In my second semester I enrolled in a class on Chicano/a culture to fulfill a university requirement. At the time I didn’t realize that this class would change my way of thinking forever. We explored many aspects of Chicano/a culture and analyzed the reasoning behind many of our traditions. I was introduced to authors like Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, who broke the silence on Chicana feminism and made a statement about female oppression and colonization. It was incredible to read about redefining my cultural understanding regarding my own sexual and personal identity.

Since my diagnosis, I had been dealing with shame and a lack of self-worth that I felt could only be redeemed by sacrificing myself for my family, community and even my own child. I thought that if I gave everything I had inside to the people I loved, I would perhaps be able to prove I wasn’t a bad person. The truth was that I really wasn’t a bad person. And I didn’t need to dedicate my life to defining the kind of person that I was. I realized that I was imprisoned not only by a disease but also by a culture that had trained me to be as clean and untouched in soul and body as the Virgen de Guadalupe. Because of my HIV positive status, I was considered useless in a culture that reduced women to their bodies. If I chose to live my life according to this structure, maybe I should just give up and die.

Overcoming the guilt of being HIV infected is quite a challenge for Chicanas. If we disclose our status, it very well may destroy the foundation to which we try hard to adhere. And this would bring shame to our families and communities. We stay silent perhaps because we believe we rightfully deserve to die. I could finally understand why so many
mujeres
just give up. Many HIV-infected Chicanas don’t seek medical care because they are too scared and ashamed to come forward. Who was going to tell these women that they didn’t have to live this way?

I was.

 

I guess this is when you could say I became politicized. The following semester, I enrolled in more Chicano/a studies classes, looking at Chicana history and theory and thinking about issues directly related to the HIV/AIDS Mexican-American community. I began to understand the reasons why Mexican Americans weren’t participating in the HIV community. My heart broke when I realized many of my sisters were going to die because they just couldn’t relate to services that weren’t culturally and linguistically suited to their specific needs. I changed my major to Chicano/a studies and anxiously look forward to graduation day, after which I plan to help my community by truly making a difference. It is strange to think about how much I have changed. Before college I believed I was a strong person. Now, five years later, I have a new definition of myself. My New Mestiza is strong-willed, empowered, inspired, beautiful and sexy! It is times like these when I don’t see this disease as a detriment. Instead, I accept HIV in my life as a special task that was bestowed upon me to help the HIV community, which is closest to my heart.

I think about my beautiful, healthy child and I remember being told he had no chance for survival. I think back to the prognosis that I had only five to ten years to live, yet today I am healthy, happy and managing a disease that almost handed me a death sentence. It is difficult sometimes to realize that my life didn’t exactly turn out the way it was supposed to. But in the long run I believe that it turned out to be something more than I ever could have imagined. I remember being asked at a conference, “If you could be cured of HIV today, but when the disease left your body, it took with it all the strength, unconditional love, compassion, endurance and empowerment that you have acquired since being diagnosed, would you still agree to being cured?”

I thought really long and hard about my answer, and with tears in my eyes I proudly held my head up and replied, “No.”

 

 

Gwendolyn D. Pough

 

 

 

 

 

The very idea that someone can attribute coming into Black feminist consciousness to the masculine spaces of rap music and hip-hop culture must seem outrageous to some people. When you add the abstract concept of love into the mix, it might become a little bit more astonishing. Even though third-wave Black feminists such as Joan Morgan, Eisa Davis, Tara Roberts, dream hampton and Eisa Nefertari Ulen have begun to make a case for a Black feminist identity and agenda tied to hip-hop culture, the linking of hip hop and feminism is still a bit much for some to bear.
¹
And although Black feminist diva bell hooks has started the much-needed dialogue on love, feminism and the revolutionary potential such a combination would grant, there are not a whole lot of feminists openly checking for the L-word. Given the history of oppression women have suffered at the hands of patriarchs who no doubt claimed to love them, it is not hard to imagine why love would be thought of as suspect. But, nevertheless, I feel the need to explore the connections between love, hip hop and my coming to voice as a third-wave Black feminist.

My development as a Black woman and a Black feminist is deeply tied to my love of hip hop. LL Cool J’s soulful rap ballad “I Need Love” (1987) was the first rap love song I heard, and it would not be the last. Rap and rap artists’ never-ending quest to “keep it real” is not limited to real-life struggles on American streets. Some rappers show an interesting dedication to exploring aspects of love and the struggles of building and maintaining intimate relationships between Black men and women. Although this reeks of heterosexism—as do many rap love songs—it also points to the very real nature of the relationship between Black men and women and most men and women of color. When you call someone your sister or brother, or comrade in the struggle against racism, a bond is created. In that bond there is love. Rap music therefore offers space for public dialogues about love, romance and struggle in a variety of combinations.

This kind of public dialogue is found in the answer/dis raps of the 1980s, which gave rise to women rap stars Roxanne Shanté and Salt-N-Pepa. These women paved the way for other women rappers by recording very successful songs, which were responses to the hit records of the men who were their contemporaries. Shanté gave the woman pursued in UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” a voice and ultimately let it be known that women would no longer suffer insults and degradation in silence. Salt-N-Pepa’s “The Show Stoppa (Is Stupid Fresh)” was a direct refutation to Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “The Show”—a song in which women are portrayed as objects of conquest.

As a Black woman coming of age during the hip-hop era, I saw the answers that Shanté and Salt-N-Pepa put to wax as more than just temporary jams to get the body moving. They let me know I could have a voice as well. They offered the strong public presence of Black womanhood that I had seen in my mother and her friends but had not witnessed in my generation in such a public forum. Before I ever read bell hooks’s
Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black,
I heard Shanté and Salt-N-Pepa rapping and securing a strong public voice for women’s issues in general and young Black women’s issues specifically. Their talking back and speaking out against unwanted advances that could easily be read as sexual harassment gave me a model for dealing with similar issues as I braved inner-city streets. In addition, their talking back changed the way I looked at romance and courtship as well as the voice I could have in those socially scripted spaces. I no longer thought I had to simply smile and keep walking when brothers made catcalls or lewd comments as I walked down the street. I felt perfectly fine and justified in rolling my eyes and telling them how rude they were or that they would never “get the digits” behaving in such a manner. I began to make up rhymes about these street encounters that sought to disrupt the men’s behavior by offering a woman’s response. One rhyme in particular was a direct reflection on a street corner encounter with a rude guy who also claimed to be an MC. I rapped:

 

My own clearly old-school flow and rapping skills aside, this is how I began to use rap to talk back in ways very similar to the women rappers I listened to on the radio. I wrote this rhyme when I was a fifteen-year-old aspiring rapper. The rhymes I wrote and the developing prominence of female MCs on the radio prompted me to look for a DJ and a crew so that I could start my rap career. With very few women rappers to serve as role models, the success of these answer/dis songs let me know that women could make it in the rap arena. They also inspired the kinds of raps I wrote—raps that were pro-woman and critiqued the inequities of gender that my young mind saw. I am not arguing that I had a strong and carefully theorized critique of gender as a fifteen-year-old B-girl. However, strong and successful women rappers and the space that hip hop provided gave me a chance to develop a critique that I now know to be the beginnings of my current Black feminist consciousness.

Even though I had no idea what feminism was at the time, I had seen strong Black women all my life. My mother was a single parent and she worked hard to make sure that my sisters and I had the things we needed. She did not call herself a feminist. But she left an abusive husband and told any other Black man who could not act right where the door could hit him. Having this strong female presence in my own home not withstanding, there was something particularly inspiring about seeing that presence personified in my own generation. Hip hop gave me that.

Another way that hip hop helped me to develop a feminist consciousness was the exposure it gave me to sexual harassment and the attitude it gave me to deal with it. The thing that stands out very clearly about that time for me was being the only girl in someone’s basement as we took turns on the microphone. At different times I warded off advances from fellow male MCs and even the DJ. It seemed like every one of them wanted to at least try and get me to have sex with him. When none of their advances worked, they eventually stopped. DJ Ronnie Ron, however, took offense to my performance of the rap I’ve included here. He thought the rhyme was aimed at him, because he too had tried to get with me and failed. So he put on an instrumental cut, grabbed the mike and proceeded to freestyle a dis rap just for me. I stopped working with him, and after a few other failed attempts at finding a DJ, I stopped writing rhymes.

As I reflect back on that time, I realize now that there was something about writing rhymes and saying them on the mike—hearing my voice loud, strong and clear—that made me feel strong. After I gave up the dream of becoming a rapper, the acts of writing and performing still give me a surge of strength. The only difference is that now I’m writing feminist critiques of rap and performing them at academic conferences and other venues. I also use rap to teach other young women of color about feminism.

 

As a woman born in 1970, who was nine years old when the first rap record hit the airwaves (The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”), I grew up on rap music. Reading Tricia Rose’s discussion of the evolution of hip-hop culture through the changes in clothing commodified by rappers and hip-hop audiences reminds me of my own evolution: from a teenage B-girl wearing Lee jeans, Adidas sneakers with fat laces, LeTigre shirts, gold chunk jewelry, and a gold tooth to an “Around the Way Girl” college freshman sporting a leather jacket, baggy jeans, sweat hood and Fendi/Gucci/fake Louis Vuitton.
²

Once I was in college, however, my relationship with hip hop changed when I stopped consuming the female identities put forth by male rappers as the girl of their dreams. As I had once been willing to be LL Cool J’s “Around the Way Girl” (1989), I began taking issue with the very notion of Apache’s “Gangsta Bitch” (1992). While I still consumed the music, I began to question the lyrics and constructed identities. Although both of these songs sought to give “props” to the girls in the hood, I found myself struggling with the image that Apache put forth. It was then that I realized it wasn’t the “bitch” that bothered me. It was the things he applauded that did. Things like the gangsta bitch fighting other women and helping him to sell drugs to other people in the hood that bothered me. These things did not fit in with the feminist identity that I was developing.

Like many of the academics and Black popular critics now writing about rap, I have a love for hip-hop culture and rap music. This love prompts me to critique and explore rap in more meaningful ways. I am no longer the teenaged girl who spent Friday nights listening to Mr. Magic’s “Rap Attack” and writing rhymes, Saturdays reading her mama’s Harlequin or Silhouette romance novels and Sundays writing rhymes and short stories. While I have grown up on and consumed hip-hop culture and popular romance, I feel it is important to note I am all grown-up.

Although I still listen to rap music and read a romance novel every time I get a chance, Black feminist/womanist theories and politics inform my listening and reading. Whenever I can, I go back to my undergraduate university to work with the youth participating in the summer Pre-College Academy. These high school students are from the North Jersey area, and I see it as a way to give back. I do it to spread feminist consciousness to new up-and-coming feminists. Young women growing up today are not privy to the same kind of pro-woman rap that I listened to via Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Yo-Yo, and MC Lyte. Even though I like Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, I know that younger women of color need the critical tools to unpack some of the messages they get from these artists.

One student during the summer of 2000 was obsessed with fancy cars. She asked me, “Ay, yo, what you pushing, Miss Pough?” After telling the student that I drove a Ford Escort, she kind of frowned, pushed up her noise and said, “Oh, that’s cute.” This student’s fascination with fancy cars and her desire to one day “push” one was not a problem in and of itself. There is nothing wrong with desiring nice things, especially when those things are out of reach and they give one something to work for. The problem occurs when students like this young lady have these desires absent of a critique of materialism and the harsh realities that go along with it. It is one thing to desire nice things and quite another to put drugs in one’s purse because “the police won’t check or suspect you” and a drug dealer boyfriend can buy you nice things in return for drug smuggling. It is one thing to want a nice car and quite another to think that the only way you will get one is to use your body sexually.

 

Parents and educators alike admonish rap because of lyrics that use profanity and glamorize sex and violence. Parents do not want their children listening to it, and educators do not see the educational value in it. I believe that the value resides in the critique. This means that we need to create spaces—both inside and outside of the classroom—for young women especially to make the kinds of connections to larger societal issues that they do not make in the clubs on the dance floors. For me, a critical look at hip hop that is based not only on a love for the music and the culture but on a love of the people that are influenced by it, is what I want to inform my Black feminist consciousness and ultimately my action.

June Jordan’s poignant essay “Where Is the Love” haunts me. Jordan discusses the need for a self-love and self-respect that would create and foster the ability to love and respect others. As I think about hip hop and the images of niggas and bitches that inhibit this kind of self-love and self-respect, I am faced with a multitude of questions. I am concerned particularly with rap and the love that hate produced—love that is fostered by a racist and sexist society. This is the kind of love that grows
despite
oppression but holds unique characteristics
because of
oppression. In many ways it is a continuation of the way Black men and women were forced to express love during slavery and segregation, when Black people were not allowed to love one another freely. Family members could be taken away at any moment. The legacy of slavery—it has yet to be dealt with properly—is the legacy that haunts Black people specifically and the rest of the country in general.