Kevin Powell: "Fatherhood, Manhood, and Tupac Shakur"

Fatherhood, Manhood, and Tupac Shakur

by Kevin Powell | KevinPowell.net

NOTE: The following excerpt is taken from Kevin Powell’s 2003 best-selling essay collection, Who’s Gonna Take The Weight? Manhood, Race, and Power in America. The original title is “What Is A Man?” Kevin Powell interviewed Tupac Shakur on several occasions while he was a senior writer at Vibe magazine, including what are widely considered the definitive articles and profiles on the late Tupac Shakur. On June 16, 2011, Tupac would have turned 40 years old. Tupac’s life and music were a constant and loud conversation about fatherhood and manhood. Indeed, Kevin Powell is writing a book about Tupac and his short but significant journey entitled, simply, Tupac Shakur: A Biography. That book will be published in the next few years. Email Kevin at kevin@kevinpowell.net.

The death of a human being, particularly a human being one has come to know fairly well on one level or another, has a funny way of making one realize, in a hurry, one's own mortality and limitations. The presence of death remains, whether we care to admit it or not. That is because life is always, whether we humans care to admit it or not, one last and halting breath away from death. I personally have had, since I was a very bad and very foul-mouthed little Black boy, an extremely ambiguous relationship with death. More to the point, I just have never gotten it. Uh-huh, sure, the church(es) I attended offered the clichéd, knee-jerk interpretation: be good and you shall get to heaven; be bad and you shall bust hell wide open.. I wondered on those days I had off from da Lawd, What hell could be worse than the ghetto in which I was born? It is also utterly perplexing because we do not know what is out there once we are gone nor do we, ostensibly, have any control over “when,” as the old folks Down South like to say, “it is your time.” But if you happen to be poor and young and Black and male and very much surrounded by death at every corner you turn, you, sooner or later, don't wonder when you are going to go, but how you are going to go. For it is, as far as our environments proclaim, only a matter of time before the grim reaper steps to you. Which is why one of the more curious occurrences in inner cities across America at this hour is the sight of young Black males, especially those who have access to money, tons of it (ya know the deal: the not-so-holy trinity of drug dealers, rappers, and ballplayers), going to their local funeral parlors and paying, in advance of their anticipated deaths, for their coffins and funerals. Some heads actually purchase coffins to match the style and make of their late model cars or sports utility vehicles. Yes, I have seen this with my own eyes and, yes, excessive materialism knows no boundaries, not even the unexplorable frontier of death, and, yes, life expectations are simply that low.

Which brings me to the late Tupac Amaru Shakur. To be brutally honest, over seven years have passed and I still feel I have not properly mourned Tupac’s horribly tragic end. I don't know if it is because I was expecting his death, or if I simply have become numb to the death marches of Black men. Or perhaps it is because I linger in denial, thinking that Tupac, like Shango, one of the deities in the Yoruba philosophy, is such a regal spirit, such a warrior, such a master of the drum, the dance and the oration, that he will live forever—for no one ever really wants to believe that death is more of a certainty than life, although it is. What I have also done during this time is think long and hard about the status of boys to men who are Black, vulnerable, and, basically, walking timebombs. And about the wicked trajectory of my own life. And about the life and meaning of every single Black man who has crossed my path, as far back as I can remember. And I've absorbed a plethora of books, statistics, commissioned reports, documentaries, press clippings, and one-on-one and group conversations, each in its own way staking a claim of relevance to the real estate known as the state of the Black man, circa the present. No matter, for the questions I keep coming back to are “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” The first question is crucial because, logically, how can I seriously begin to account for someone else's life, like Tupac Shakur's, if I can barely account for my own life? Yet, I learned a long time ago, in accounting for my life I am in fact accounting for the life of other Black men. We are, after all, mirror reflections of each other and interconnected due to race, gender, culture, and that beleaguered battleship we christened history. Consequently, the questions of “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” are actually one in the same….

I've thought about these issues a great deal since those sad moments when I was in Las Vegas covering what would be the last days of Tupac Shakut’s tragic story for Rolling Stone. It was otherworldly because up until that week, I had written about Tupac exclusively for Vibe magazine. But because I had been fired four months prior, I was now on assignment for another magazine. No matter; I knew I needed to be in Las Vegas. Why? I am not exactly sure. When I arrived in Vegas, three days before Tupac died, I said to myself that this was not the type of city in which I wanted to die. There are slot machines even at the airport, and you can literally get anything you want on the Strip: sex, drugs, cars, a lawyer, a marriage, or a divorce. It is little wonder Las Vegas is called “Sin City.” As I made my way around town, talking with cabdrivers, hotel maids, construction workers, card table operators, prostitutes, police officers, and others, it was clear that few knew or even cared to know about the life and times of Tupac Shakur.

Some thought he was a gangster. Others thought he was a gang member (some said he was a Blood, others said he was a Crip). Many also said that Tupac’s getting shot in Las Vegas was bringing unnecessary attention to a city already dogged by a seedy image. The more I explored Las Vegas (I couldn’t do much else until the day Tupac actually died because Suge Knight’s security team—or whoever they were—made sure that the media and other unknowns did not come too close to the hospital), the more I thought of Nicholas Cage’s Academy Award-winning role in Leaving Las Vegas. Hadn’t Cage’s character, an outcast, come to Las Vegas to die. Hadn’t Cage’s character succumbed to alcohol addiction and taking up with prostitutes? Hadn’t Cage’s character given up on life? How many times, I asked myself, had Tupac Shakur said to me he would not live a long time, that he in fact did not want to live a long time, and that he would probably go down in a hail of bullets? The thought of the fast-moving world of Las Vegas being a burial ground for those who had lived fast lives, like Tupac, unnerved me. Maybe, as many of his fans have suggested, Tupac did see it coming and knew when and where he was going to die. Hadn’t he achieved his very modest goals of “hearing myself on a record and seeing myself in a movie”? What else was there for him to live for if he was, as he said so often, in so much pain? So much pain, he maintained, that only his huge intake of weed allowed him to live as long as he had.

When I listen to some of the comments about Tupac Shakur, specifically, and about young Black men in America’s inner cities, in general, it is clear that many of those commenting are very much out of touch with reality. It is so easy to say, for example, “Well, Tupac had choices” or “Tupac knew what he was getting himself into.” What choices, really, did Tupac have? He was born poor, so he knew he had to survive. While middle-class White and Black children have the option of thinking about what they want to do with their lives, Tupac decided early on that being a rapper was his surest and perhaps only ticket out of the ghetto. And in the insulated world of ghetto culture, your Blackness, your manhood, are narrowly defined by how “real” you keep it, how hard you are, how much you represent the thug life. Move one step away from that and you are considered a sellout. And why would Tupac Shakur—who had been an outcast his entire life, who resented that when he was child his cousins said he was “too pretty”—position himself in any other way except as a “real nigga.” That does not suggest choice; it suggests doing what you have to do to survive in the ghetto world that produced you. Sure, Tupac could have assimilated easily into the realm of Hollywood (he did hang out with the likes of Madonna and Mickey Rourke) but that plastic, middle-class existence meant nothing to him. Nor was it real. What was real were the homies, from South-Central Los Angeles to the South Bronx, whom he felt he had to represent. So when you think of Tupac—the baggy pants with the boxer shorts peeking out, the numerous tattoos, the bald head, the bandana, the pimp limp, the jewelry, the women, the mouth, the attitude—you are essentially getting the average working-class Black male in America today. And last time I checked, there are more of us than the bourgeois variety we are told by some to be like. From the bebop era of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to hiphop, Black men have always rebelled against the customs of the larger society through their art and their lives, through their beings. People like to say hiphop is just so harsh, so foul. Well, as Amiri Baraka once famously put it, you can always tell the station of a people by the music and culture they produce at any given time. To blame hiphop and the Tupac Shakurs of the world for what is wrong with Black youth is to ignore the blood on your own hands. Some of the more wishful among us like to say Tupac Shakur could have been “our next Malcolm.” Again, that kind of statement speaks to our fascination with icons and our propensity for deifying people who breathe and sleep and bleed and defecate just like the rest of us. Moreover, as far as I am concerned, the question is not whether Tupac Shakur would have been the next Malcolm X had he lived, but whether Malcolm Little would have become Malcolm X had he been born today. In other words, there is no organization or movement in place that could reach out to the Tupac Shakurs of America and uplift them the way the Nation of Islam did with Malcolm (those who believe the NOI today is what it was then must be on crack). Tupac, like many of us who are young, Black, and male, was pretty much out there on his own. Who was giving him direction? And who understood fully what he was going through? Not his mother. Not his family. Not his friends. Not his fans. Not his enemies. Not Suge Knight. Perhaps not even Tupac himself. And not his father, whoever that was.

On the evening of Tupac’s death I drove with my journalist friend to the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, where Tupac had been shot. As my friend called in her story I just stared at that intersection, wondering why there were no witnesses in such a well-lit and heavily traveled area. I called my homegirl Tracy Carness in Los Angeles, and her first words to me, before we could even exchange greetings, were “Kevin, he’s dead. I can’t believe he is dead.” Neither could I. Tupac was, in a phrase, a “bad nigga.” That scared a lot of people, and excited just as many. I was, through the years, somewhere in the middle. I was not scared of Tupac. I was scared for him. But I also loved the fact that he had no problem throwing up his middle finger anywhere and anytime it suited him. As he rapped once, “I was given this world, I didn’t make it.” And as far as Tupac was concerned, this world had been giving him and people who looked like him the finger all along. So Tupac’s life was an exacting sort of revenge, on White people, on snobby Black people, on the rich, on anyone who had no sympathy for the oppressed and voiceless on this planet.

After I spoke with my friend Tracy, I went back to my hotel room, got drunk, poured some liquor on the carpet in Tupac’s memory, and recalled the last time I saw him in person. It was late November 1995. Tuipac had been bailed out of an upstate New York prison by Suge Knight (he had been incarcerated for a sexual assault charge stemming from that hotel room encounter with the young woman) and was now back in Los Angeles shooting a video for the first single from his double CD album. The $600, 000 “California Love” video was being shot a hundred miles north of Los Angeles at a dry lake bed in the desert. I milled around for a while checking out the imitation Mad Max set, then made my way to Tupac’s trailer. I knocked on the door, and someone on the other side pushed it open, releasing a powerful gust of marijuana smoke. And there he was, the big eyes shining brightly, the smile still childlike and broad as an ocean, his exposed muscles—probably because of his eleven-month prison bid—bigger than ever. Clearly this was not the same Tupac who had, only ten months earlier while in jail, told me that he was no longer going to smoke weed, that he was not a gangsta, that “thug life is dead.” Or maybe it was. Whatever the case, from that day in November until his death Tupac became in my mind an exact replica of the character he played in Juice. It was shocking to hear his new album, it was shocking to see him in television interviews, and it pissed me off that he helped to escalate the tensions between East Coast and West Coast rappers (born on the East Coast, Tupac had gone back and forth with his sentiments until he signed to Death Row Records in October 1995). For sure, when I asked Tupac what was going to come of the East Coast-West Coast rift, he said, as he was being whisked away to do a television interview, “It’s gonna get deep.” How prophetic were those words, as first Tupac then The Notorious B.I.G. were blown away, both murders still unsolved all these years later. I watched Tupac for the next few hours as he shot scenes and paraded in front of cameras, counting wads of money, as the hulking persona of Suge Knight stood in the background.

A few weeks later I spoke to Tupac for the last time when I conducted a follow-up telephone interview with him. Apparently much had changed in Tupac’s mind since our last interview, and he let it be known how angry he was, it seemed, with everyone. But, he maintained, he could at least trust Suge Knight and the Death Row family because they could protect him from his enemies. I remember hanging up the phone after that interview, on December 2, 1995, and feeling very sick. I know what it is to be angry because I have a very short fuse. And I know what it is to feel paranoid, to believe in your heart that no one is your friend and that everyone is out to get you. But Tupac displayed a side of himself, a darker, more menacing side. I thought, Damn, maybe I never really knew him. I didn’t want to speak to Tupac Shakur anymore. I guess a part of me knew it was only a matter of time before he would get his wish and be gone from us forever. I never stopped following Tupac’s life, and whenever I heard someone mention his name, I listened as carefully as I had done back in 1992. ‘Pac once told me he wanted me to be Alex Haley to his Malcolm X, to be the official biographer of his life. And that is precisely how I felt at times, like the one writer who was attempting to present a broad picture of Tupac Shakur, who was making an effort to understand him because, hell, Tupac was me, and I was him, ghetto bastards from birth, living until it is our turn to die. So, in a way, the “new” Tupac made me feel as if I had lost a friend, and there was nothing I could do about it. He was gone.

I met Tupac’s natural father, Billy Garland, a few weeks after Tupac died. Tupac had been so adamant about not knowing his father that I did not believe that this man was in fact his father until I saw him in person. But the moment I saw him, I knew he was: There was the tall, lean body, the flat-footed walk, the girlish eye-lashes, the long nose, and, yeah, the bushy eyebrows. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about the meeting. While I was glad to meet this man Afeni Shakur had referred to in my first Vibe article on Tupac as “Billy,” I thought of how long it took Billy to reconnect with his son. And that was only after he had seen Tupac in Juice. What, I wondered would have been different about Tupac’s life had Billy been there? What would have been the same? Did Billy only become interested in his son once he became famous and, presumably, rich? Did Billy realize Tupac had spent his entire twenty-five years searching for father figures in the form of teachers, street hustlers, fellow rappers like Ice-T and Chuck D., and men as different as Suge Knight and Quincy Jones? I didn’t ask Billy Garland any of these questions but they were definitely on my mind. No matter: I sat and talked with Billy Garland for two or three hours in his Jersey City apartment, about his life, about Tupac’s life, and about his absence from Tupac’s universe. Billy showed me pictures of himself with Tupac, of the letters ‘Pac had written him from prison, of the many cards he had received since Tupac’s untimely death. Tupac had barely known this man, I thought, just as I barely knew my father. Was Billy Garland one of those Black men I had described previously, one of the damaged souls from the civil rights era, an ex-Panther and now a broken-down warrior trying to get a grip on his life via his dead son? Billy even asked me if he should sue Afeni Shakur for half of the Tupac Shakur estate. I was both astounded and appalled. This man had really been nothing more than a drop of sperm, and now he wanted to reap the benefits of the money a dead rapper as iconic as Tupac was sure to bring. But for some reason I was not angry with Billy Garland. A part of me understood exactly where he was coming from because, hell, he is a Black man in America and he has nothing to show for it except a tiny apartment, and a dead, famous son. Billy had had a hard life himself, in the 1970s and 1980s, as he struggled to come of age as Tupac was coming of age. There had been no blueprint for Billy Garland, just as there had been no blueprint for Tupac Shakur, or for me, for that matter. We were-are—simply thrown out there and told to swim, although most of us do not know how and are too terrified to learn.

But it is something to see older Black men as I do, as a man myself. I will be completely candid here and say that I have carried around a great deal of resentment toward older Black men since my father disowned me when I was eight years old. Indeed, I have had little tolerance, little respect, and and very little interest in what most of them have to say for themselves. It is the worst form of cowardice to bring a child into the world and then abandon that child either because you cannot cope or because you and the child’s mother are not able to get along. How many Black boys and Black girls have had their emotional beings decimated by that father void? Certainly Tupac, and certainly me.

Perhaps it is for this reason that I cannot readily recall all that Billy Garland said to me on that day after he asked my advice about suing Afeni Shakur. I was disgusted and saw in him my father and my grandfather and my uncle, my mother’s only brother, and undeniably I saw myself and what I could possibly become. The predictability horrified me, because I could hear the echoes of my mother’s caveat from my childhood: Don’t be like your father. But what did my mother mean, precisely? If not like him, then like whom? In seeking to raid Tupac’s grave for dollars, Billy Garland showing the worst attributes of Black manhood, but also of White manhood, of American manhood. So what would the alernative be? How does one break the vicious cycle, begun on the plantations, of Black man as stud, as Black male body forced to tend someone else’s land and property, as Black man torn away from his family, moved to and fro, of Black man being beaten down to the point that his woman and his children no longer know his name. Again, what of slavery, which lasted 246 years and lingers still in the collective bosom of Black men in America, particularly since we were slaves a hundred years longer than we have been free? So how could I really be mad at Billy Garland—or my father, for that matter—anymore? Garland, via Tupac’s death, was getting more attention than he had ever gotten in his entire rotten life and he needed Tupac’s death to validate his existence. How twisted a concept! But it is true. And what of my father, that no-good do-for-nothing, as my mother often referred to him? I may never see the man again in my lifetime, don’t care to, really, but I know wherever he is, he is not free. He is wounded; he is, like an older Black men and like a lot of younger Black men, in a state of arrested development, suspended above the fiery coals of his unstable journey here in America. But, with all of my being, I have to muster the nerve to forgive him, my father, for impregnating my mother, for not being there at the hospital when I was born, for not marrying my mother and leaving her to the whims of the welfare agency, for only showing up sporadically the first eight years of my life, for declaring to my mother on that damp, rainy day that she had lied to him, that I was not his child, that he would not give her a “near-nickel” for me ever again—and he has not. Oh, how I suffered, as Tupac suffered, without a male figure in my life, someone whose skin felt like mine, whose blood beat like mine, whose walk pounded the earth for answers, like mine. But alas, poor Tupac, it was not meant to be, and you are dead, and I am here, and we both have fathers, yet we both are also fatherless. The only thing I can say at this moment in my life journey—because, unlike Tupac, I did get to make it past twenty-five, into my thirties—is that I have to stay alive any way I can, and I have to be my own father now.

***

Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, public speaker, and businessman and, in 2010, was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York. A product of extreme poverty, welfare, fatherlessness, and a single mother-led household, he is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey and was educated at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. Kevin is a longtime resident of Brooklyn, New York, and it is from his base in New York City that Kevin has published ten books, including his new title, Open Letters to America (Soft Skull Press). This book is a collection of essays that examines American leadership, politics, and various social issues in the era of Barack Obama. Next up for Kevin is his long-awaited memoir of childhood and youth, the boy with a mother and no father. The highly anticipated Tupac Shakur: A Biography will follow this. Atria Books/Simon & Schuster will publish both.

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day

special to NewBlackMan

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day
by Kevin Powell

Those of you who know me or my work know that I am anti- all forms of hatred and bigotry, be it racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or a reckless disregard for the disabled or handicapped. That at this stage in my life, and for the rest of my life, I am a firm believer in nonviolence, love, and forgiveness, even of those who have wronged us in some way. That, as evidenced by my life journey as an activist, writer, and public speaker, I truly do love all people. And mean it—

Nor do I believe in ever viewing myself solely as a victim these days, either, because of my race, or my past class background of poverty. I am with bringing people together, with our communicating with each other through our differences, with our healing that which separates us due to our differences, whenever and however possible.

So it takes a lot for me to write a blog asking people not to support a business. But in the early morning of February 14, 2011, after leaving an amazing post-Grammy party with two female friends, we waited for the available shuttle service to get us from the top of the canyon to the middle of it where we and other party attendees had to park our vehicles.

We remembered the long walk from there to the event and opted to use the shuttle service one of the security personnel suggested we wait for. We were under the assumption the shuttle van would take us and other passengers to wherever our cars were parked along the canyon route. Instead the driver, a very young man, did not announce until the van was in motion that he would not stop until we were at the Beverly Hilton Hotel (fyi, I am not staying at that hotel, but one in West Hollywood). This meant many of the passengers, including the three of us, would have to pay for taxis to get to our cars back in the canyon.

When we got to the hotel's parking lot, we asked the driver if he could take us back up the hill, since he was returning to get more passengers anyhow, so we could retrieve our car. He refused. I attempted to reason with the driver but he would not budge. At that moment a tall (about six feet two inches) man, with thick jet-black hair combed backwards and wearing all black, stepped to the shuttle van's driver's door, spoke in a language I did not understand, then rudely told the two women and I that he was the owner of the company, that we had to get out of the van, that there would be no ride back up the canyon route. I attempted to explain our situation to this gentleman, who said he was the owner of the company, but he cut me off repeatedly, and threatened to physically remove and harm me if I did not get out. Not once did I raise my voice, curse, or disrespect this man in any way. He went a step further, coming around to the passenger side once the women were already out, saying that I "should go back to the jungle" (a reference to one of L.A.'s poorest and most violent communities of color), that he didn't like my people, and that he was a real African (I would learn later the man is from Tunisia, the northernmost country in Africa and is essentially an African Arab). It did not matter who or what I was, not that I am into status or anything of the sort. But it was clear this man had a deep disdain for Black people, and he had immediately reduced me, in his mind, to the worst imaginable stereotypes without even so much as allowing me to complete a full sentence.

Thus in the matter of just a couple of minutes I was physically threatened and racially insulted a few times as my women friends witnessed very clearly. Still, no raising of my voice, cursing, or disrespect towards this man. I told him I was going to call the police to deal with this matter and his hyper-masculine attitude kicked in with the response "I don't care, call them." So I did. And about 15 minutes later two Los Angeles-area officers, a female cop and a male cop, and I were walking from the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hilton to the parking lot to have a talk with this gentleman. I did this because I wanted to obtain, with the help of the officers, his name and the name of his company:


Moncef Said Abbou
President, M&S Valet Parking
Los Angeles, CA
www.msvaletparking.com


And because it was my hope that with the police officers there as mediators, I would not need to file a complaint or write a blog, even. But Mr. Abbou could barely contain his venom and arrogance even in the presence of the police officers: he lied to the male cop who pulled him aside about what happened, and walked away and returned to his car when the officers asked him to listen to what I had to say one final time. This from an individual who runs a business that is completely dependent on its interactions with other human beings. And this behavior to a person, me, who will always have a need to hire or refer companies like his, since I do business in Los Angeles, which is quite a bit.

According to its company website, M&S Valet Parking provides these services: parking management, valet parking services, and shuttle service. And its very prominent quote reads

"We pride ourselves on upholding the highest standards of customer service and efficiency."

Yet even with the police present the man was rude, because he knew the police could not do anything to him other than say I could file a civil complaint against his business. And I can tell people like you, who frequently rent or lease these types of companies in Los Angeles (or know people and companies who do) that you should not support such a company or its owner any further. I am not seeking nor want an apology. And I’ve already forgiven the man in my mind and heart. But if he talked to me in this manner, imagine how many past, or future, passengers have experienced similar behavior from this gentleman because of his bigotry and lack of humanity.

Furthermore, as you can see, I am writing this piece in the wee hours of the morning, because the incident occurred around 4AM PST.

So I have not gotten to sleep as yet. But I feel very strongly that people who express this kind of hatred toward another human being should be exposed and their businesses should not be supported. I happen to be a writer, a public speaker, and a very well-connected political person, so I have a platform. But imagine the people who do not.

And outside my hometown of New York City, Los Angeles is one of the most culturally diverse communities in America. Like every other American city I know L.A. has its share of racial divides and prejudices, in spite of its great multiculturalism, and it is, like New York, still very segregated in many ways. But I think the least we can expect after a Los Angeles-Hollywood awards ceremony such as the Grammys, where people from varied backgrounds perform and are honored (with the Grammys creatively connecting artists who usually do not share the same stage), is a basic level of respect and civility by companies shuttling us from one place to another.

This incident is especially ironic for me for a few reasons. One, long before the party my day had begun with my very first visit to Los Angeles’ Agape International Spiritual Center, a church, led by the brilliant Rev. Michael Beckwith, famous for its message of love, inclusion, and diversity. And that is exactly what I received from the service on this day, and from a short private meeting with Rev. Beckwith afterwards. Indeed, he talked about people like me, who he calls “social ministers,” who must have consistent spiritual paths given all the slings and arrows we deal with in our daily interactions with people, as activists, as community leaders, as agents for change.

I thought of Dr. Beckwith and Agape, for sure, as Mr. Abbou was insulting me inside and outside of his van. I thought, in a very quick instance, all I had to lose if I responded with the same kind of ugliness being hurled my way. I thought of Egypt, another nation with African Arabs, one where Mr. Abbou could have easily been from, and one that many Americans, including Black Americans, are very much supporting at this time of change. And I thought, later, how what transpired between Mr. Abbou and I is so remarkably similar to what far too many Black males, myself included, have experienced from Middle Eastern or African Arab cab, car, and shuttle drivers in my beloved New York City. That is the reason, in fact, so many years ago, I made a conscious decision to rarely take yellow cabs in New York, to just roll with private car service when necessary, because who is going to tolerate being humiliated, disrespected, lied to and lied on, simply because of someone else’s fear and ignorance? Suffice to say, I will never use a shuttle service in Los Angeles again—

And this sort of thing will go on if we allow it to go on, if we do not use our individual and collective voices to say enough, once and for all, and to say, loudly, ain’t I a human, too?

***

Kevin Powell is a nationally acclaimed public speaker, activist, and the award-winning author or editor of 10 books. He resides in New York City, the borough of Brooklyn, and was a 2010 Democratic candidate for Congress there. Follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell

Kool Herc, Hiphop, and Healthcare

Kool Herc, Hiphop, and Healthcare
by Kevin Powell

WRITER’S NOTE: Please visit this site right away to learn more about Kool Herc and how you can support him during his time of medical challenges: http://www.djkoolherc.com/

I can’t even remember the first instance I heard the name “Kool Herc,” but I am fairly certain it was during the mid to late 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president, Jesse Jackson was, well, different, a new jack filmmaker named Spike Lee was stirring the pot called Hollywood, and I was a young and avid “hiphop head.”

Ever since I digested the boom-bap strands of hiphop in the late 1970s in my native Jersey City, New Jersey (my hometown’s local hiphop heroes was a crew called Sweet, Slick, and Sly) I was hooked. The Sugar Hill Gang’s landmark song “Rapper’s Delight,” which I would later learn plagiarized lyrics from Grandmaster Caz of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers, was the shot heard ‘round the world. Kurtis Blow was hiphop’s first solo superstar. Afrika Bambaataa was the spiritual and musical emissary from funk and soul to hiphop. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five spoke so poignantly to my then-ghetto existence that I cried, hard, the first time I heard “The Message.” And Run-DMC was for us bboys and bgirls what The Beatles had been for screaming White teens two decades earlier.

Fitted Lee Jeans with stitched creases, suede Pumas, Le Tigre shirts, Kangols, name belts, baseball caps with sketched designs in the front folded on top with paper stuffed inside thus the caps floated on our heads like royal crowns, magic markers in our front or back pockets so we could tag our names here there everywhere (my tag was my nickname, “kepo1”), and so many of us popping locking breaking moonwalking doing the Pee Wee Herman the trot the wop the smurf the running man. We had no idea we were in the middle of a cultural revolution, but that is exactly what it was. And I am sure most of us did not know it was Kool Herc who kick-started the whole thing.

Right after my high school years I left Jersey City and went to college at Rutgers University where I would stumble upon the anti-apartheid movement, Black and Latino history in ways I had never contemplated previously, an upper class student named Lisa Williamson who would later change her name to Sister Souljah, and a spirit of activism that has been with me ever since. Indeed, we did not call it “hiphop activism” back then, but that is precisely what folks like myself, Souljah, Ras Baraka, April Silver, and many other Black and Latino babies of the Civil Rights Movement were doing, to a hiphop beat. Organizing in welfare hotels in mid-town Manhattan; building a summer camp for poor youth in North Carolina; re-registering voters in the Deep South; marching against police brutality here there everywhere; and staging state of the youth rallies and concerts in Harlem and Brooklyn.

It was somewhere between my trips to clubs with names like The Rooftop, Union Square, and Funhouse, and that work as a youth and student organizer, that his name first pushed its way into my consciousness:

Kool Herc, the father of hiphop—

But the details were sketchy at best:

Born in Jamaica as Clive Campbell.

Came to America in the late 1960s, on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement.

Heavily influenced by great artists of the funk and soul era, including James Brown.

Lived in The Bronx, one of New York City’s five boroughs, and the birthplace of hiphop culture.

Earned his nickname, “Hercules,” because of his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court as a youth. It was later shortened to Herc. And DJ Kool Herc & The Herculoids would become one of the early groundbreaking hiphop acts.

Along with Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash widely considered the founding fathers, and the holy trinity of hiphop.

Generally credited with creating “the break beat” in the early 1970s, a djing technique that forms a critical foundation for hiphop music.

And that is essentially what I would know until far into the 1990s, when I first met Kool Herc in person at one or another hiphop program attempting to make hiphop into the political movement it never was, and that it will never be.

For hiphop is a cultural movement with political roots and political overtones, no question, but I have always been clear, even as a youth, that leaders have to emerge from hiphop’s multiple generations who, while nurtured on hiphop culture, must engage and work with the artists and iconic figures of our day just the way, say, Malcolm X engaged Sam Cooke, Maya Angelou, and Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King, Jr. engaged Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte. Artists, cultural icons, can highlight, reflect, and support a movement, but those of us with real organizing skills and consistent activist mindsets must be the ones to make movements happen. The artists inspire activists to do what we do, and we activists inspire the artists to do what they do. And every now and then a great artist also happens to also be a great activist. (Think of Bono of the rock group U2, or Chuck D, front man for Public Enemy.)

That, for sure, is what we were doing in the late 1980s and early 1990s here in New York City, and in other parts of America. Making a movement go as we connected with everyone from LL Cool J and MC Lyte to Doug E Fresh and Ice Cube. But somewhere things went awry, many of us young activists fell off and out of the work for the people, and what we thought was a burgeoning social movement for change, fueled by hiphop, got decimated by a shift in what the corporations were suddenly permitting to be marketed and sold, with enthusiasm. Or not. In other words, ever since the early 1990s we’ve had those of us who represent hiphop culture, with its five core elements (djing, mcing, dancing, graffiti writing, and knowledge). And then there is the hiphop industry, the bastard child of the culture, manipulated, twisted, and bent out of shape by a few corporations more interested in a dollar bill than the holistic development and natural growth of this art form. That is why we’ve been bombarded with over-the-top cursing and use of the N word, glorified violence, sexism and a ruthless disrespect for women and girls, excessive materialism, and soft porn and gangsterism passing as music videos for far too long. I am a writer, an artist myself, so I do not believe in censorship in any form. I am also a history buff, so I know full well our society is riddled with racism, sexism, violence, anti-intellectualism, and materialism, and that hiphop did not create any of these things. Hiphop, being the dominant cultural expression it is, simply is the most immediate and accessible frame flashing, 100 beats per minute, what is very wrong in too many to count American ‘hoods, both urban and suburban.

Likewise, what I do believe is missing is balance. Yes, I am absolutely clear that hiphop is a multicultural movement, belonging to people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, throughout the globe. And I love that I have come across, say, Israeli and Palestinian hiphoppers using the music to talk peace, or Italian, German, or French hiphoppers learning English via the music, or South African or Latin American hiphoppers using it as a tool for social change, or Asian American hiphoppers in California who love, embrace, and represent the culture far more than the offspring of the founders do. But the harsh reality is that the images we see, the sagas of mayhem we hear most, are of Black and Latino people. This is not just damaging to our psyches, just as crack cocaine was, but it is damaging to our spirits. And we’ve become stuck in a very vicious cycle where I sometimes wonder how many of us truly grasp that there is nothing wrong with rhyming about the ghetto, about parties and material things, if we also are expanding our worldviews enough to discuss other concerns, too. But that can’t happen if specific gatekeepers in the industry game block that kind of personal and cultural evolution from occurring. A Lil’ Wayne, talented and fascinating as he is, is put on a mighty big pedestal because he is not really saying much at all and has become a cartoonish figure merely there for entertainment and shock value. Meanwhile, someone as intelligent and insightful as a Talib Kweli has to grind, hard, just for airplay, gigs, and our Twitter attention spans. As long as that kind of awful imbalance exists, then you can bet your bottom buck that Kool Herc and every other hiphop pioneer are not a part of conversations around the state of hiphop, the culture or the industry.

And just as there is a huge gap between older folks who know and can speak to the social struggles of bygone eras and the youth who often do not know those tales, there too is a huge gap between we heads who understand the history and traditions of hiphop, and those who actually believe it must’ve begun with Tupac or The Notorious B.I.G. I wish I were exaggerating, but the things I have heard in my travels across America about what hiphop is or is not are often, at best, numbing. No fault of our own, it is simply not taught in the schools, as it should be at this point. And God knows very few grade or high schools, or colleges or universities, ever consider bringing a living, breathing hiphop legend in to guest lecture, to be an artist in residence, especially given how much hiphop music and culture have penetrated every single crevice of American society.

And that is why quite a few who claim to love and be hiphop do not even know who Kool Herc is. And why those who have benefited, culturally, spiritually, and, yes, monetarily, have rarely engaged him from this thing we call hiphop. And this thing called hiphop, which was, for the most part, created by poor, working-class African Americans, West Indians, and Latinos in New York City, with a parallel energy generated by Latinos and Black on the West Coast in the 1970s, is now a multi-billion dollar global industry, and the dominant cultural expression on the planet for 30plus years and counting.

That, I imagine, is why Kool Herc and other pioneers of hiphop have always made it a point to stand up at various hiphop-related events and state who they are—sometimes with love and respect, sometimes with shades of bitterness and resentment framing the edges of their mouths—because if they do not, then they would remain largely invisible, or completely ignored. Think about how, for example, Black basketball trailblazers from back in the day, the ones documented in that great ESPN film “Black Magic,” must feel when they hear of the millions a LeBron James can command because of the sweat and blood equity they put in when there was no cable television, no endorsement deals, and these players were just as likely to be the victims of racial injustices as cheers.

As a matter of fact, I recall when I curated the very first exhibit on the history of hiphop culture in America, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999, I encountered this kind of weariness, born of years of neglect, on numerous occasions. But I also remember the great joy many of these hiphop legends displayed because they were being recognized for their contributions. Unfortunately, that exhibit was so woefully under-funded, that we had to scrape together sponsors as best we could just to mount the show and fly pioneers there. For all the billions of dollars hiphop has made our economy and certain corporate giants, the great irony is how some still don’t view it as a legitimate art form, then and now. Regardless, as you can imagine, it was profoundly moving to meet, one by one, the architects of hiphop. Folks with names like Lady Pink, Popmaster Fabel, Lee Quinones, and an army of others. But the one person who always had the greatest mystique around him, without question, was Kool Herc.

For the record, we need to understand that Kool Herc is to hiphop what individuals like Big Mama Thornton, Louis Jordan, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard are to the history of rock and roll. Or what Jelly Roll Morton and The Creole Band are to jazz: visionary figures that far ahead of their time that they have been taken for granted, save a handful of diehard fans and historians.

And therein lies the enormous dilemma of Kool Herc’s current health condition. According to his sister Cindy Campbell who, as long as I can remember, has always been there supporting the legacy of her brother, Herc was hospitalized last October. He has serious kidney stones and they must be removed. $10,000 worth of medical bills have been piled up, and there is a need, according to Cindy, to raise at least $25,000 to cover expenses tied to this very necessary surgical procedure.

And Kool Herc, founding father of hiphop, is like so many dwelling in America: He does not have health insurance. Kool Herc makes his living djing and speaking, but he undoubtedly has not been treated in the way rock and jazz heroes and sheroes are treated.

Moreover, such a twisted paradox, this theme of Kool Herc’s lack of healthcare coverage, as we watch lawsuit after lawsuit being filed, throughout our nation, to dismantle President Obama’s historic legislation. And the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has already voted to repeal the president’s healthcare reform. Although that will not happen in the Democratic-controlled Senate chamber, the House vote is, assuredly, part of a long-term strategy aimed at undermining and derailing our president’s legislation.

To put this in a different context, as Kool Herc was setting foot in America in the late 1960s, Dr. King was publicly condemning the war in Vietnam and ultimately calling for “a poor people’s campaign.” For Dr. King understood that true democracy could never be fully realized in America if each and every one of us did not have access to the most basic of needs, including a quality education, a decent place to live, an opportunity to work, and the ability to get help if we were to take ill.

Dr. King was assassinated, and as quickly as major civil rights victories were won, conservative forces moved to dismantle or destroy them. That is why I always say to those critical of hiphop to keep in mind that if Kool Herc and others had not created this art form in the first place, there would be even more Blacks and Latinos, especially, who are unemployed, on the streets committing crimes, in jail, and without healthcare, or without anyone to petition for us to get help as hiphop icon DJ Premiere initially did for Kool Herc.

“Herc wants to use this to bring awareness, not just about healthcare,” says Cindy Campbell. She adds: “There are so many other hiphop legends in similar situations, but they are not Kool Herc, so no one is going to rally around them. We want to create a foundation, a union, a fund, that makes sure these pioneers are protected in their time of need.”

And that is what we who truly care need to do. I have been bombarded with facebook messages and tweets from individuals not only angry and disturbed that Kool Herc is in this position, but also that certain hiphop luminaries are not moving, quickly or at all, to cover Herc’s medical bills. Names are being called. And hiphop moguls and superstars are being denigrated publicly. I personally don’t think that is the way to go. If the wealthy in hiphop America want to step up, they will. I hope they do, but I am not expecting much at this point given how much our culture has deteriorated into a space of spiritual imbalance and extreme individualism at the expense of the larger hiphop world. When any people, community, or culture has been dumbed down that much by forces beyond our comprehension, then it is not difficult to get why someone as valuable as a Kool Herc is as easily discarded as one’s last text message, or one’s last order of fast food.

Thus, what would be much more effective is, again, that permanent fund or foundation to support hiphop pioneers and classic hiphop artists just like we see with other genres of popular music. That way we never again have one of our legends sitting without healthcare as they make their way through their 50s, 60s, and beyond.

Additionally, I echo Cindy’s contention that hiphop, after all these years, needs to be recognized by our country, on a federal level, for the great cultural contributions it has made to America, and to the planet. No Kool Herc, no hiphop, and there would be no Queen Latifah, no Will Smith, no Jay-Z, no Russell Simmons, no Eminem, no mass popularity of professional basketball, no swagger to President Obama’s walk, no street teams as a marketing concept, and no spice to our American vocab (Do we really think catchphrases like “I’m good” just fall from the sky?).

Similarly, my friend, Toni Blackman, is not only one of the best freestyle rappers in the world, but she has made a career of being an American cultural ambassador, traveling from nation to nation, as a hiphop artist, crossing boundaries in the same way that American jazz musicians, for years, have done with the U.S. State Department.

Imagine if someone in Washington acknowledges our hiphop legends for their cultural contributions. It would be the path to truly honoring and recognizing a Kool Herc, an Afrika Bambaataa, a Grandmaster Flash, a Cold Crush Brothers, a Rock Steady Crew, a Universal Zulu Nation, an Ernie Paniciolli (the dean of hiphop photographers), and the numerous founding fathers and mothers of hiphop culture.

By treating them like the national treasures that they are—

Kevin Powell: "Guns in America"

Guns in America
by Kevin Powell

"Annie Christian was a whore always looking for some fun
being good was such a bore, so she bought a gun
she killed John Lennon, shot him down cold
she tried to kill Reagan, everybody say gun control"
-Prince, "Annie Christian" (1981)

"...a prayer vigil/press conference at Brookdale Hospital to pray for the 16 year old girl that was shot point blank in the face. The Saturday, January 15th shooting took place on Belmont and Sackman in Brownsville, Brooklyn...."
-Email posted by Brooklyn clergy/community leaders (2011)

Prince, the musical genius and icon, was singing about an American mindset of 30 long years ago, one that is very alive today. And, obviously, far more males than females engage in gunplay as evidenced by who shot John Lennon, President Ronald Reagan, and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Regardless of the metaphors, we should heed Prince's point.

And the Brooklyn girl referenced above is Kervina Ervin, who was in critical condition but has progressed enough that she will now have surgery on her mouth, since it was badly damaged by the bullet. There has been much speculation on why Kervina was shot (Was it gang-related? Was it revenge for some prior street fight?). But what is clear is that Kervina is, symbolically, millions of miles away from Tucson, Arizona, and the national outpouring of grief (well-deserved) that has accompanied the day-to-day vigil for Congresswoman Giffords.

For sure, Kervina Ervin's life is as valuable as the Congresswoman's. Yet we would not know that because there has been no presidential visit to Brownsville, one of the poorest communities in America, and a 'hood whose pockmarked skies are often littered with the pop pop pop of bullets.

Nor has there been round-the-clock media coverage. What we have instead is Kervina's family, led by her mother, doing the best they can to make sure Kervina survives that gunshot.

And I wish I could say Kervina was the sole victim of gun violence in Brooklyn in January, but I cannot. For the period of Friday, January 14, 2011, through Thursday, January 20, 2011, there were 2 murders, 7 non-fatal shooting incidents, with a total of 11 non-fatal shooting victims. And that is only for communities in northern Brooklyn. Imagine what is happening in other parts of this New York City borough that I love dearly, or in so-called ghettoes nationwide. Right here in our America we are losing a generation of young people to gun blasts that rival the violence in Afghanistan or Iraq, or in other war-torn countries.

Accordingly, as we debate guns, gun control, and what happened, precisely, in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday, January 8th, and who, exactly, is responsible, I think it time we cease pointing fingers at each other and take a good look in the mirror at ourselves.

For there is something wrong with us as a people, as Americans, when some of us can justify, in the aftermath of that Arizona shooting tragedy, or the countless shootings in America's suburbs and inner cities, the right to bear arms. I am very clear what the Second Amendment says but, honestly, it is tough to hear those words this very moment, especially since I have had to deliver eulogies at more funerals than I can count. And console more mothers, fathers, relatives, friends, and distraught community members than I care to recollect. Each and every single funeral tied to gun violence.

For that reason America needs to be completely transparent about the fact that we have a profound and dysfunctional relationship with guns, that we are literally blowing each other away, and few seem genuine in their desire to stop the bloodshed for good.

For sure, as I sat in my living room during our most recent Dr. Martin Luther King holiday weekend, gunshots spit from the bowels of Fort Greene Projects, directly across the street from my condo building. I could not help but think of the great irony of the hate email I had received since the Arizona shooting tragedy. Individuals saying I had incredible nerve to call for gun control, that I was "un-American," "unpatriotic," and one critic essentially figured out a way to portray me as anti- our American soldiers overseas because of my desire for major gun control. I also hear the words, frequently, of what my dear friend April Silver said to me in the aftermath of Congresswoman Giffords being shot: "Kev, you are out there as a public figure, too. That could have been you-"

It could have been any of us with strong opinions about our nation and our world that someone out there does not like. But I am not afraid, and I am not anti- anything. I am for nonviolence, love, respect, and peaceful solutions to conflicts. And I want to see the endless merry-go-round of Americans, regardless of background, being wounded, maimed, paralyzed, or murdered purely because someone figures the only way to resolve a beef or differing point of view is through the barrel of a gun.

Indeed, when something like the Arizona calamity happens, or the mass killing on the campus of Virginia Tech (2007), or the slaughter at the Fort Hood military base in Texas (2009), or the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado (1999), we Americans are aghast with horror, we freeze, we ponder and reflect, and vow, with substantial passion, that we will not allow this to happen again. And then it does. At our homes, at our workplaces or our schools, on our public transportation systems. Wherever we be, there be bullets flying when we least expect it.

Just this past weekend, in fact, we had the shooting outside a Washington State Wal-Mart that left two dead and two Sheriff's deputies wounded. Both the shooter and a teenaged girl police believe was somehow connected to the suspect were killed. In Detroit, a lone gunman was brazen enough to walk into a police precinct, opened fire, and wounded four officers before return gunfire took his life.

Why? Because we are a violent nation, a nation that was founded on violence. Just ask Native Americans, Black Americans who had to trek through slavery and segregation, poor and or ethnic Whites, Mexicans, women, the LGBT community, or any other group in our lengthy and hectic history who have had to deal with guns being aimed in their direction. No question that we are a nation that has often settled scores, in our wars, in our movies, in our video games, and, no doubt, in our political gripes, with gunplay. Or with talk or boasts of gunplay. Pump that, like a drug, into the minds and veins of any people enough, and add anger, rage, alienation, or, yes, emotional instability or mental illness, and you've got a recipe for American tragedy after American tragedy.

That said, the great misfortune to me is not simply Tucson, Arizona. God bless those victims and survivors, and God knows I am praying for Congresswoman Giffords' full recovery. But the greater misfortunes are the ignored, forgotten, or anonymous individuals, like Kervina Ervin, who wonder, each and every single day of their lives, in some cases, if they will catch a bullet, as we say, just because they live in a community where guns are so easy to obtain. Or if they are the wife or girlfriend of a man who is an abuser and has threatened to shoot them. And the stories go on and on-

That is why stats like these are so staggering:

1) Since 1968, when Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy were murdered, with guns, over a million Americans have been killed, with guns
2) In any given year there are over 9000 gun-related murders in America. In developed nations like England there is 39 per year, or just 17 in Finland in any given year
3) Murder rates due to guns in America are 6.9 times the rates in 22 other heavily populated and high-income countries combined
4) Medical costs and costs to the criminal justice system, in America, plus all the security precautions (think of metal detectors at airports, at schools, and elsewhere) wind up costing us, as taxpayers, over $100 billion per year

What we are discussing, then, is a national crisis that must become a national priority and a national conversation, led by our president, Barack Obama. Mr. Obama should start by urging passage of a bill, H.R. 308, to ban large capacity ammunition magazines, an important life-saving measure now before Congress.

Beyond this, under President Obama's leadership we as citizens sick and tired of being sick and tired of gun violence need to challenge our elected officials to put more meat on the Brady Bill, signed into law by President Clinton in the 1990s. That means cities, towns, states, and the national government have got to work together to make it much more difficult to get a gun. We've got to fix the background check system immediately, create a national formula for that, and make all records available of anyone who wants to purchase a gun, including medical and criminal records, or any reports from a school or workplace of unstable behavior. And those loopholes that make it so easy to get a gun without any check whatsoever must be closed. What kind of nation are we that a teenager, or even younger, can presently get a gun from someone, and use it for deadly purposes, as if he, or she, were playing a video game for fun?

When I look at how easily Jared Lee Loughner was able to secure a weapon to shoot Congresswoman Giffords and others, I just scratch my head and wonder where were the background checks, the sharing of information about his emotional instability and why, for God's sake, was he pulled over by the police, just moments before the tragedy, and summarily allowed to carry on?

(The running joke in many Black communities, and not so funny, either, is that if Mr. Loughner were Black, no way the police would have allowed him to carry on so easily. Well....)

I am not suggesting that anyone individual or institution is responsible, but certainly we are in this together. That means some of us have got to get the courage to stand up to the National Rifle Association, finally, and to gun manufacturers. And to gun sellers as well, be they at gun shows, or in the streets, back alleys, or hallways of America. It is a kind of national sickness to think it normal to carry a gun, to have access to a gun, just because you want one. But, conversely, when I was speaking at a college in rural Maryland last weekend, a student asked me about guns for those who hunt for food. I had to pause for a second and recall that my own South Carolina born and bred family (although I am personally a vegan these days) hunted to survive. And that some of my kinfolk, in the South, still do. Until we have an alternative way of feeding every single American, I can't be mad at folks for doing that, even if I don't personally like it. There is a big difference between hunting for survival sake and hunting people, like prey, just because-

But what I am also concerned about is a gun lobby so powerful that fought, tooth and nail, against the Brady Bill, and which continues to jump through those loopholes that make gun access so easy. We the American people must collectively gather the nerve to challenge these folks until they, and we, understand that we do not need "civility," as has been argued since the Arizona tragedy.

No, what we need is a culture of nonviolence, one where, again, it becomes a national priority right in pre-school or grade school, to teach our children the lessons of Gandhi, of Dr. King, of anyone who is rationale enough to understand violence in any form, or the ready availability of guns, is simply not acceptable for a society that calls itself civilized.

And this conversation is not just for everyday American citizens, either. It needs to extend to some in law enforcement who are what the singer Marvin Gaye once crooned, "trigger-happy polices," especially given the rampant use of gunfire at Black and Latino males in our urban environments. Yes, being a police officer is a dangerous job and I have the utmost respect for our police forces. But they too have been contaminated by a culture of violence where brute force, or gunshots, has often become the first and only solution for our conflicts, problems, or fears.

Thus if we are going to talk about guns and gun violence, the national conversation must be from every single angle. Each one of us must ask ourselves why is it okay to reside in a culture where violent blockbuster movies rule our theaters, why television habitually features gunplay, why historical tales we've digested since childhood have always featured weapons and violence, and why it is okay for our children, or us, too, to play video games that showcase violent imagery that feed our seemingly insatiable appetites for murder and mayhem, even if it is fictionalized?

This is the only way we as a nation will turn this corner, if we are totally real with ourselves, and are willing to steer the DNA of our culture in a new direction. And as Martin Luther King III said earlier today, at a press conference with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in response to the crisis of guns in America,
"We are a much better nation than the behavior exhibited."

And way past time for us to show it. For our children. And our children's children, too-

***

Kevin Powell is a public speaker, activist, and author or editor of 10 books, including Open Letters to America (Soft Skull). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and can be emailed at kevin@kevinpowell.net.

Kevin Powell: "Arizona is America"

Arizona is America
by Kevin Powell

I say this because Arizona is not the problem. We the people are the problem.

That is, we Americans who think it is cool to engage in rhetoric, political or otherwise, that encourages division, ugliness, hatred, and violence, directly or indirectly.

Over the past several years, we've witnessed this madness via certain television networks, tv and radio talk shows, the internet, and various rallies and protests: a climate of hatred and, yes, violence, which has been boiling, with a quickness, in our America.

This is not about left versus right political philosophies, nor Democrats versus Republicans, or progressives versus Tea Party followers, or about the wackness of Arizona, a state that once, aided by one of its senators, John McCain, refused to celebrate the Dr. King holiday after it was made a federal law (to be fair, Mr. McCain eventually backed away from that position).

Not per se.

But it is about any of us who are so politically, emotionally, and spiritually immature that the only way we know how to participate in dialogue on any issue is to scream, curse, or otherwise threaten and dehumanize each other. Or move to murder each other. Quite literally.

Add to this cruel reality show the new world order our technological revolution has birthed in the form of the social networks, and you suddenly have these spaces where an angry and misguided individual or groups of angry and misguided people can post the most anti-social pronouncements imaginable, grow an audience, and prepare, right in front of our very eyes, to unleash their rage on unsuspecting and innocent persons.

So, yes, it pains me that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner in Arizona. Painful, too, that 19 others were wounded and 6 are dead, including John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl named Christina Green.

According to Christina's mother Roxanna Green, mother and daughter were there at that Tucson, Arizona area Safeway parking lot because her daughter was interested in government and wanted to learn how to give back to the community. A little girl full of life's possibilities blown away by a young man mentally unstable enough to believe he could change the course of history, with a gun I am sure he was able to purchase rather easily.

As a result there will be no giving back for little Christina ever again because no one can give that child another breath. But what we can do is heed the words of Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County sheriff at a press conference:

"The anger, the hatred, the, uh, bigotry that goes on in this country, is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona has sort of become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Well, yes, indeed, when you review, say, the horrible anti-immigration sentiments there. Plus the fact that the late Judge Roll had to accept protection from the Federal Marshals Service in 2009. This was in response to his allowing to proceed a civil rights lawsuit by a group of Mexicans against an Arizona rancher who thought it his right to stop people at gunpoint as they crossed his land, then turn them over to the Border Patrol.

Regardless of where you may fall on the issue of immigration, pointing guns at other human beings, or outright shooting them (which has occurred often in those parts), is simply not the way. Nor is threatening the life of a federal judge because you do not agree with his decision. Says that we are not quite the fair and egalitarian civilization we claim to be, at best. Says some of us are barbaric, at worst.

Beyond Arizona, nor is it acceptable for the flames of anger and venom to be blown, mightily, at those Summer 2009 townhall meetings on the pending healthcare legislation.

Nor has it been acceptable the barely masked threats against President Barack Obama, a constant stream of verbal aggression so nasty that you wonder if someone wants to do total harm to his presidency, just because-

Nor is it acceptable for Sarah Palin's website to not merely list 20 vulnerable Democrats to target in 2010, but to have the picture of a gun crosshair displayed for each of the 20, including Congresswoman Giffords.

Nor is it acceptable for The Tea Party to condemn the Tucson shooting (while scrambling fast to state Jared Lee Loughner is not one of them) but still not have the moral courage, nor outrage, to condemn, once and for all, its own oratory, these many months of its movement, that dance right at the doorstep of political anarchy and, yes, violence.

For when we use the words and images of violence, be we on the left or those of us on the right, we invite violence right into our lives, even if it is a moderate Congressional member simply hosting an outdoor gathering to meet her voters on a weekend trip back to her district. Because once you've fostered, egged on, and actually kick-started a violent atmosphere and a violent mindset, there is no sacred ground in our America, and you will not be free from violence and tragedies, be it in the ghettos or in the suburbs.

And as long as there is an incredible addiction to violence in America-ranging from averting our eyes from the regular practice of domestic violence against women to our acquiescence in unnecessary wars overseas, to our love affair with violent blockbuster films and video games, to this twisted need to define our culture (especially we men and boys) through the barrel of a gun, you come to the clear-eyed conclusion that violence, as one 1960s activist put it matter of factly, is as American as apple pie.

But it does not have to be. But only if we Americans are collectively willing to be morally responsible enough, and mature enough, to engage in conversations that do not seek to hurt or destroy others, just because you may not like them or their views. In our American journey we've witnessed violence against Native Americans, Blacks, poor and ethnic Whites, women and girls, the handicapped and the disabled, gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals, Latino and Asian immigrants, Arabs and Muslims, Jews (it is not lost on me that Representative Giffords is the first Jewish Congressional member from the state of Arizona), and more members of the human family than we could list in this blog.

It is seemingly the preferred way, to resort to violence when we believe everything else has failed, when we feel alienated, angry, and confused, as evidenced by Jared Lee Loughner's internet postings (as was the case with the Columbine shooters in Colorado back in the day). Or when we feel our way of life, our way of viewing the world, is threatened.

For example, when I hear some Americans say they want their country back, that they want things the way they once were, I as an African American often wonder, Want your country back for whom? And, The way things once were for whom? If we followed that logic I would be, say, my long-dead grandfather: not able to look White males or females in the eyes for fear of violent punishment; having to jump off the curb if a White person were walking in my direction; and my life reduced to work in someone else's cotton or tobacco field, or as a source of cheap, service-oriented labor, and my life permanently imprisoned by poverty and no hope whatsoever. If that or any other brand of social injustice is not a form of violence, then I do not know what it is.

So part of this unraveling of violence in our society, too, has to do with all of us, of every race and culture and gender and faith and class and sexual orientation, having the chutzpah to talk shop about our country, mountaintops of mistakes included, both past and present. In other words, in order for us to have a future not completely defined by violence, anger, and finger-pointing, I am essentially calling for a very necessary kind of soul-searching that America needs to do before what happened to Congresswoman Giffords becomes as routine as the too-many-to-count assassinations and assassination attempts we witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s.

In our America-

***

Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, and public speaker. He is the author or editor of 10 books, including Open Letters to America (Soft Skull). He is based in Brooklyn, New York, and can be emailed at kevin@kevinpowell.net

Kevin Powell on 'For Colored Girls'

special to NewBlackMan

“Tyler Perry’s ‘For Colored Girls'
By Kevin Powell

Push pause before watching for colored girls…

People either love or hate filmmaker Tyler Perry—that much is clear to me. Weeks before I decided to see Perry’s “For Colored Girls” on opening night I could hear the extreme reactions to the fact he was adapting, producing, and directing a film version of Ntozake Shange’s classic 1970s choreopoem/play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf.”

“I think Tyler is the worst filmmaker ever,” one pal of mine said, an amazing actress and writer, who is completely traumatized that Perry was even permitted to touch Shange’s writing.

And then there have been all the pre-film blogs written and passed around which have, in the main, been attempts to prepare viewers, particularly Black women movie goers, for the worst. Indeed, one blog I sampled encouraged women to read Shange’s words first, to go as a group, almost as if bracing themselves for a natural disaster. Another blog demolished Perry as a proprietor of modern-day minstrel shows in real-time Black face. This woman’s blog was so detailed in her point-by-point critiques of Tyler’s pictures, that it set off what appears to be at least 100 responses, most supporting her views, with a few not, and a handful saying she was an extremist, and, better yet, a hater. And this last blog and its comments are from a year ago when it was first announced Perry was tackling Shange’s piece.

(A not-so-humorous side note: From the hardcore reactions to one Tyler Perry, you would think his films have done as much damage to Black America as, say, racism, HIV/AIDS, failing public schools, rampant unemployment, crime, drug dealing and drug abuse, gentrification, the prison-industrial complex, police brutality, Republican right-wingers and the Fox News Channel, ghetto dictatorships and lazy leadership in the form of certain very identifiable Black politicians and Black preachers, corner liquor stores, fast food restaurants, and every other challenge you could name….)

Since then it hasn’t helped that the trailer for the adaptation doesn’t do the actual film any poetic justice. You see Janet Jackson far too much (it is clear Mr. Perry has an acute fascination with Ms. Jackson in spite of her well-meaning but limited acting abilities), and you see a plethora of quick-cut imagery in the film, but unless you’ve closely read the Shange book yourself, or have seen the words interpreted on the stage through the years, you come away from the trailer not really clear what the film narrative is.

As a result I was really torn about watching “For Colored Girls.” First off, I have seen some of Perry’s “Madea” films and, yes, they have made me cringe. How could they not when I know very well the history of Black images in America, how destructive so many of these images have been to our collective spirits, psyches, and bodies, be they mammy, big momma, tragic “mulatto,” gangsta, thug, pimp, prostitute, thief, hustler, or bumbling, stumbling coon or buffoon. If there was a true and intentional balance to what we colored folks are given to digest on television, in movies, in music videos, in video games, and now on the internet, then there would hardly be a whisper about Tyler Perry’s films. And if he had stayed in the urban Black theater scene—our theatrical version of the famous “chitin’ circuit” for Black performers—then no one, save poor or working-class and or church-going Black folks, would probably even know who Perry is today.

But it is precisely because those poor or working-class and or church-going Black folks flock to venues like the Beacon Theater in New York City, every time one of these plays is announced on local urban radio stations, that Tyler Perry is famous and fabulously wealthy. The plays are simplistic, but with enough Black around-the-way humor and morality lessons that serve as a necessary escape from the grind of our daily Black lives. Who would not want that? And is it little surprise that Perry’s career first skyrocketed during the Bush II years, and continues to be an entertainment outlet for the souls of many Black folks during The Great Recession? No, he is not a great writer, not a great director, not a great actor. Not yet, and I have no clue if he will ever be any of those things. But Tyler Perry is an astute entrepreneur, a marketing genius, someone who has filled a huge void for working-class Black America, for church-going Black America, with film after film. Up until “For Colored Girls,” Perry has not pretended to be an artist, or a super-talented director in the vein of Julie Dash, Martin Scorsese, or Kasi Lemmons.

No, what Perry has done is exactly what pioneering African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux did from 1919 to 1948: give Black people themselves on screen on a regular basis, something that, as evidenced by Perry’s huge box-office receipts with each film (including approximately $20 million this past opening weekend for “For Colored Girls”), we desperately crave. Indeed just as Oscar Micheaux steadily fed the Black masses with his 44 films and 7 novels (including one national bestseller) over those 29 years, Perry too has been relentless with his productivity and his work ethic, churning out, it feels, a film a year, if not two. This is on top of his plays, his television shows, and the running of his new state-of-the-art film and television studio in Georgia. But please be clear that Tyler Perry is not the first African American to own his own film and tv compound. No, that distinction belongs to Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid and what they built and opened in Virginia in the late 1990s. But Perry has taken the best of the hustle and flow of Micheaux, the bravado of Blaxploitation wonder-man Melvin Van Peebles, the make-Black-films-by-any-means-necessary mantra of Spike Lee, and the business savvy of the Reids, remixed the ingredients, and given us Tyler Perry, the baddest Black film mogul this side of the 21st century. And that begets a taste of power that makes Perry the Booker T. Washington of Black filmmakers. In other words, like how Booker T. was hotly debated in his day for his dealings with Black folks and issues of race, so too is Tyler P. hotly debated in his day for his dealings with Black folks and, yeah, issues of race (images).

But what one cannot deny about either is that in an America where it has always been extremely hard for Black folks to own and sustain institutions, both built institutions that stand as unbelievable achievements of the human spirit, and in spite of entrenched American racism and White privilege in the realms of education (Booker T.) and Hollywood (Tyler P.). One could even go so far as to say that outside of Oprah Winfrey, Perry is easily the most powerful Black entertainer in our nation, and one of the most influential regardless of race.

For Tyler Perry has taken the business of Black filmmaking to another level. A level that Micheaux, Van Peebles, and not even Spike Lee could have ever achieved. Because Tyler Perry is not only the master of his own ship, the owner of his vision and his brand, but he is now positioned to tackle Hollywood racism head on without ever uttering a single word about it. For sure, Perry says he does not discriminate against anyone, and that is clear from his diverse team of production folks. But it is also abundantly clear he has added brick after brick to the Spike Lee foundation of hiring Black people in every position possible, to nurture and train them for long careers in film and television production. The kind of opportunities they would not get elsewhere. I mean, when I look at the credits to, say, Francis Ford Coppola’s epics, “The Godfather I and II,” it is not lost on me the numerous Italian surnames. Coppola was clearly looking out for his people. So why can’t Perry do the same for his?

But with the box office success, the full-fledged studio, the role as the most powerful Black person in Hollywood, and an uncanny ability to get every kind of Black actress or actor you can think of into his films (no matter the quality of the films), I imagine the question began to gnaw at Tyler as the refrain scrutinizing his filmmaking skills, or lack thereof, have grown louder and louder: Where do I, Tyler Perry, go from here?

Here, I believe, means Tyler knows, there in the underbelly of his Southern soul, that he cannot continue to make, solely, Madea films, preachy PG movies with one-dimensional characters and a gumbo pot full of plotlines. That he had to leave his comfort zone, had to create 34th Street Films so that he can begin to make more meaningful films, better developed and multi-faceted films, films written and directed by others, and perhaps others with extensive film training, who can bring to life the kind of Black tales seldom told, and seldom seen in the history of American cinema—

Push play: for colored girls unfolds…

Living in New York City for the past 20 years as both a writer and activist means I have seen and heard versions of Shange’s choreopoem many many times. I even once lived with and dated an actress who, like many Black actresses, frequently used a monologue from “For Colored Girls…” in one audition or another. What I learned from my then-girlfriend, and from my Black female actress friends through the years, is that there is an enormous scarcity of monologues written specifically for Black women, that what Shange wrote really is as timeless as Shakespeare. And as poetic and lofty, too. That when you enter the world of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls…” you are, in essence, entering high and sacred ground.

Which brings me back to my decision to see the film on opening night. The evening before I had visited my mother in my hometown of Jersey City, and there we were, in the same kitchen she has been in for 30-plus years. As I ate the fish my moms prepared for me, she sat, all 67 years of her, slightly slumped, in a plastic-covered chair by the stove. My mother looked both at peace, and well, very tired. Tired from years of being a Black woman in America. Tired from years of working in cotton fields, factories, and in the homes of the wealthy and the elderly. Tired of being tired, these several years later, from talking about how my father had wronged her. To the point, now, that she herself had aged with hints of sorrow in her heart and twinges of bitterness at the corners of her mouth. She, a colored girl, who had survived the hostile abandonment of my father, and all the would-be suitors who came to move in, not to love her. She, a colored girl, who had survived acute poverty, minimal life skills, and an 8th grade education to raise me, a Black boy, to be something other than yet another wretched statistic. Who will sing the coarse songs of women like my mother? Who will tell their tales if not us?

And then to the other extreme of why I was in Jersey City Thursday night: Judge Shirley Tolentino, the first Black woman judge I’d ever met, had died, and I went to St. Aloysius Church on Westside Avenue to pay my respects at her wake. And what a wake it was. The church was loaded with all kinds of people, mostly Black, there to say good-bye to a Black woman many considered one of Jersey’s most powerful judges. I met her when I was a teen and driving my mother mad. I don’t even recall what the particular indiscretion was with the law, but there I was in front of Judge Tolentino, utterly stunned a Black woman, this Black woman, was about to decide my fate. For whatever reason, she gave me a break, I never went to a juvenile detention center, never landed in jail, so I had to see her one last time, even in that coffin box, just to say “Thank you.” I had thought of Judge Tolentino often through the years, long before I knew of Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth, or Ida B. Wells or Mary McLeod Bethune, or Shirley Chisholm or Angela Davis, or the ladies in Shange’s “For Colored Girls…,” or Michelle Obama, even. For Judge Tolentino, like my mother, represents a kind of power that Black women have always possessed, from the golden earth of Africa to the concrete jungles of America’s inner cities, a power that said you may try to destroy us by all available means but like that Maya Angelou poem, still we rise—

And somewhere in Tyler Perry’s life, ostensibly, he has been affected, aided, raised, prepared, by Black women like the ones I know. All us Black boys know them. No, I have not always liked the way Perry has depicted Black women in his films, but I also cannot ignore how many Black actresses he has employed, quite a few of them so remarkably gifted by their God yet so completely shunned or forgotten by Hollywood. Nor can I disregard that in his newly minted studio are soundstages named after Black female acting giants like Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson. Somewhere in Perry croons an undying love for Black women—

Yes, these things were on my mind as I made my way to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Perry’s film. I purposely sat in the back row so that I could watch any who entered. And here they came, slowly but surely, Black women like my mother, and Black women like Judge Tolentino. Younger Black women and older Black women. Straight Black women and lesbian or bisexual Black women. Black women with perms and weaves, and Black women with dreadlocks or baldheads. There were a few of us Black males present, and a few White sisters and brothers. I could feel some Black female eyes on me as I sat alone, wondering what had brought me to this film, maybe. I think if I had suffered through what countless Black women have suffered through in their lives, including my mother, I would question, too.

For what is it to live in a nation where you have been victimized not only because of your race, but also because of your sex? Where you have not only had to contend with sheer madness ranging from slave masters to corporate bosses with a reckless disregard for your being, but also from husbands, boyfriends, lovers, fathers, grandfathers, uncles, sons, and grandsons whose own internalized racism and oppression have destroyed them and, in effect, destroyed you. This is the heaviness of experience and history that these Black women march with into one Tyler Perry movie after another. They simply want to see fragments of themselves on screen, be it Madea or Shange’s “For Colored Girls.” And most of these women are not like my actress friends, not like my cultural critics friends, not like my academic or scholarly friends, and not like my bohemian friends: well versed in all things Black, cultural, artistic, political, or literary. They are more like my mother, a woman who does not read books, save bits and pieces of the bible, and who has never really been told (nor mustered the strength to tell herself) that she is beautiful, that she is powerful, that she is visible.

Which is why since the 1970s when I was a child, as far back as I can remember, my mother mostly goes to the movies when it is Black people up on the screen. My moms is especially fond of Whoopie Goldberg and I suspect it is because Whoopie, like my mother, is a dark-complexioned Black woman who has been told, more times than not, that she is ugly, and you and I both know that Whoopie, and my mother, are quite beautiful. Therefore in seeing Whoopie shine on that screen my mother is seeing herself shine, is seeing her beautiful brown skin shine in a way it never shined in those cotton fields, in those factories, in the homes of those wealthy or elderly folks, and certainly never shined in the eyes of my long-gone father. Women like my mother, younger and older, simply need to know that their lives are valid, that their lives do matter. Love him or hate him, that is the space Tyler Perry has created for many a Black person, a space my mother asked me to share with her when she requested “Can you take me to see that movie about them colored girls?” Yes, ma, I will—

So there is this film, and as “For Colored Girls” began, I washed away the negative reviews I’d read, the questions on why him to do this, and simply watched the movie. I would say about 15 minutes into it I realized I was watching something very different than other Perry flicks, that he had grown as a filmmaker, that he was not butchering Shange’s words as so many had suggested he would, or had.

Instead what we were getting was a 21st century reading of “For Colored Girls,” very much required, in reality, given that Shange’s piece was created in the 1970s. And no different, undoubtedly, than Ethan Hawke taking Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and setting it at the Denmark Corporation in his early 2000s film version, while retaining the old language. If Hawke could keep the old language and update the setting, why can’t Perry? Moreover, it was clear to me, as the drama unfolded, that many in the theater, including the Black woman sitting right next to me, had never read the Shange book, nor had ever seen a staged production. Tyler Perry’s flick was it, was their introduction. And in this world of fast-paced videos, Twitter, and every manner of cell phone with video components, Perry has taken the best of what Shange has willed to us, combined it with a stellar ensemble that features Phylicia Rashad, Whoopie Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, and Loretta Devine, and created something that is, well, very special and quite magical, in spite of the hurt and pain peppered throughout this film.

The film had to be given a bona fide backdrop in Harlem, the men had to be given some voices here and there, and the women’s names could not merely be Lady in Red, Lady in Brown, and so on. We need to know them as Crystal and Yasmine and Jo. Need to know their names because those names are the real names of real Black women who live in Harlem, Brooklyn, Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, D.C., St. Louis, Houston, wherever Black women be. But Perry had to cast his bucket somewhere, so Harlem became the metaphor for anywhere America, specifically one walk-up apartment building where most of the characters dwell. Think of how Gloria Naylor put her main female characters on one block in her majestic novel “The Women of Brewster Place.” Or how a Brooklyn neighborhood exploded off the screen in Spike’s “Do The Right Thing.” With “For Colored Girls” I was awestruck by the color palettes used for the film, the exquisiteness of these Black women’s many skin hues, the imaginative method in which Perry stitched Shange’s original words in with freshly written lines to make the narrative go. And go they do, for they are brilliant, hardworking, dedicated, steadfast, loving, divine, and, often, very very lonely in their own skins. You feel it with Phylicia Rashad’s character, the manager of the building, whose sole purpose at this moment seems to be as ears and eyes of what is happening with her neighbors. But it is in helping them through their pain that gives her life a pulse. You feel it in Whoopie Goldberg’s character, so terrified of the universe that she has turned her apartment into a shrine of boxes filled with God only knows what, her life reduced to prays, pray oils, and an overwhelming belief that anyone who does not believe in her God and her religion is destined for hell, including her two daughters. You feel it in the innocence of Anika Noni Rose’s character, wide-eyed and recently out of a relationship, and so horrifically duped by a handsome man into a rape scene and subsequent monologue that was so jarring it felt like the entire theater had instantly become a mountainous chorus of tears, wails, and gasps for air. And you feel it in Kimberly Elise, so broken by mental abuse and domestic violence that she is just one step from a complete nervous breakdown. And then her husband does it, he murders her two children in broad daylight, dropping them—and the sanity and heart of Elise’s character— from their apartment window, their blood smeared on the asphalt below like the jagged journey of Black women and girls in America.

“I never thought I’d see the day when I enjoyed a Tyler Perry film,” said one female friend, and I concurred with her. But I am not sure if “enjoy” is the right word. “For Colored Girls” is a conversation, a mirror, something, obviously, that one culturally and socially ignorant film critic after another just did not get as they blasted the film in their reviews. One repeated critique is that the movie deals too much in pathologies. Are you going to tell me that Coppola’s “Godfather I and II,” widely hailed as two of the best movies of all time, are not riddled with multiple social pathologies? Likewise with “Citizen Kane,” or “Forrest Gump,” even? So to these over-the-top haters of Perry’s “For Colored Girls,” What film, exactly, were you watching that that is the sum of what you viewed?

How does one come away from that film and not agree that Kimberly Elise should be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and Thandie Newton (with Anika Noni Rose and Whoopie Goldberg not far behind) for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar? How does one not acknowledge the terrific score, the captivating cinematography, or the set design, even? And how does one gripe that the back-alley abortion scene is not credible in these times if one has never been to, never lived in, nor ever spent significant time in an American ghetto and, as a consequence, is not fully aware of the physical and psychological lengths us poor Black folks have historically had to go to, even in the age of Obama and in an allegedly post-racial America, to duck and dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?

Additionally, I do know if a Tom Hanks, a man who was on a mediocre television sitcom and made mediocre film after mediocre film in the 1980s, could reinvent himself as a leading man and Oscar winner in the 1990s, then why can’t Tyler Perry be given the space to evolve, to grow, to be something other than what first made his fame and fortune? Or if a Marvin Gaye could go from crooning catchy but clichéd Motown pop ballads to making a masterpiece model for social protest music with “What’s Going On?” then why can’t we believe, in our hearts, that Perry made a strong, compelling, and emotionally-riveting movie with “For Colored Girls?”

Yes, there are flaws in the film. Here are the glaring ones for me: Janet Jackson, who I have always loved in general, just should not be in the film nor should she have been given top billing. Janet simply does not have the range and depth she displayed as a child actor on “Good Times.”

Next, the director did not push Kerry Washington hard enough, I feel, to display the kind of emotional dexterity needed for her character as she witnessed the breaking down of lives about her, and her inability to have a baby. And it was so pathetically predictable that Janet’s husband in the film would turn out to be “a brother on the down-low.” We’ve got to stop fanning the flames of fear and homophobia to Black people like that, once and for all. The issue with HIV/AIDS in Black America is sexual dishonesty and sexual irresponsibility across the board, not whether someone is straight or gay. Everyone has to be more honest and everyone has to be more careful. That scene is one moment of a few in the film where I felt we were getting the old Tyler Perry, the Perry as Madea film where the script got stiff and, well, lethargic and unimaginative.

And, no, for the record, I as a Black man had no problem whatsoever with the depiction of Black males in the film. “For Colored Girls” is not a male-bashing film. It is a story about women and if you, a man, happen to be uncomfortable with what you see and hear, then maybe it is because elements of who you be are in some of those characters. I absolutely thought about my own relationships with Black women through the years as I digested “For Colored Girls,” thought of women I have dated, women I have treated correctly and as my equals, and of women I’ve treated poorly or disrespectfully. So if you are an honest man, one serious about your own growth and evolution, then you come to “For Colored Girls,” or any story about women and girls, with emotional courage and integrity, not disdain, finger-pointing, and haterism.

Unfortunately, this same wave of negative male responses occurred when Shange’s “For Colored Girls…” opened on Broadway in the 1970s, and with “The Color Purple,” the film, in the mid1980s. So it is to be expected given the patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny that runs rampant on our planet, still. Men will refuse to see the film and say it is unfair to them just because. But what is missing is that we males do need to listen to the stories of women, do need to empathize with their highs and their lows, do need to understand how much more we can learn about ourselves, if we simply develop the intellectual muscle to listen to the blues songs of women, including the women who are our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins, lovers, bosses, employees, wives, friends—

But, alas, in an American society as drenched in sexism as it is in racism, that is a huge leap for many of us. Male privilege is a tough thing to shake, above all when we’ve been conditioned our entire lives to believe we are the superior sex, to believe that the only way to view the world is through our eyes. As if the women’s eyes don’t matter at all. The stories told in “For Colored Girls” are very factual, happen to women in Black, White, Latina, Asian, and Native American communities every single day; happen to women who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths, or no faiths whatsoever; and those stories, in particular the ones of rape and domestic violence, are the reasons why it was stated in a New York Times Magazine article in 2009 that global violence against women is the human rights issue of the 21st century.

What that means, matter of fact, for my community, the Black community, is that we’ve got some long-held and far-rooted traumas that we’ve got to deal with immediately. That was evident from the excessive laughter during scenes that were clearly not funny. Also evident by all the Black folks complaining about the audience chatter that took place during their viewing of the film. Or complaints of cell phones that went off. Mad annoying and each gripe valid, yes, but worthy of long Facebook posts and blistering denigration of each other that reeks of Black self-hatred and, in some cases, blatant classism by some of my more, uh, uppity and uptight Black sisters and brothers? No. But as long as we continue to suffer from what scholars and activists in Black America refer to as “post-traumatic slave syndrome,” passed from generation to generation, like a baton in a relay race, where your pain becomes your child’s pain, and so on and so forth, then we will continue to be divided, inwardly and outwardly. Was that not clear from the scarred and shredded relationship between the characters depicted by Whoopie Goldberg and Thandie Newton?

At the end of the day, people who are hurting simply want love, but often fail to recognize the first love must be of self. In sexing all those men in the film, Newton’s character was essentially ducking and dodging the inner her, and ducking and dodging the past she needed to confront, finally. That is why that coming together of community at the end of “For Colored Girls” is so critical, and so necessary. For none of us can go it alone. Yes, Black males have issues too and, and yes, we deserve films that present us as whole human beings, as well, but that is not the point of “For Colored Girls,” nor should it be; and, no, Black women are not abandoning us simply because of one film, but Perry’s “For Colored Girls” does suggest that if we are to be healthy, and whole, then it means we’ve got to make conscious decisions to come together in a way where I am not hurting you and you are not hurting me. And to love our powerful and beautiful selves before it is too late—

That is the challenge for Mr. Tyler Perry, as “For Colored Girls” continues to make money and continues to be both debated and disparaged. That is, can Tyler Perry—or will Tyler Perry—strive and struggle to transform the one-man economy his films have manifested, and use his voice, and his power, to push the envelope to make films, Black films, that not only show the vast complexities of the Black experience in America, and on this planet, but to also be spaces, simply by virtue of the genius of the work he produces and endorses for others, that can be healing circles for as many of us as possible?

Will Perry, the next time a woman’s story is presented to him, step aside and support a dynamic Black female director like Nzingha Stewart, Julie Dash, Ayoka Chenzira, or Kasi Lemmons? Will he, as a man, use his male privilege to make sure, in fact, that “For Colored Girls” the movie is not the last time, for decades and decades, we see such rich and layered depictions of Black women in theaters? Tall orders, yes, but I don’t think Perry has been given this grand opportunity just for the sake of making dollars. As Perry admitted himself in one interview, he tried to avoid doing “For Colored Girls,” both on Broadway and on film, but it kept coming back to him. Now it is done, it is out, and it is what he does from this moment forward that will determine his place in cinematic history and whether Tyler Perry’s body of work will ultimately be a legacy for the ages.

***

Kevin Powell, New York City-based activist, writer, and public speaker, is the author or editor of 10 books, including the essay collection Open Letters to America and the poetry book No Sleep Till Brooklyn. Kevin’s writings have appeared in Esquire, Newsweek, Ebony, Essence, Rolling Stone, Vibe, huffingtonpost.com, and elsewhere through the years. Email him at kevin@kevinpowell.net