Bullies Can't Be Blamed for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides

Do schools care more about racism than homophobia?

Bullies Can't Be Blamed for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides
by Keli Goff

There’s a famous story in the Goff household about my mom’s first week back in school shortly after it was integrated. There was a boy who apparently wasn’t a fan of the progress our country was making and decided to take it out on my mom by shouting the N-word at her repeatedly, every single day. For days mom turned the other cheek, so to speak, but on the fifth day she declared loud enough for everyone to hear, that she was going to beat the stuffing out of the guy. Now anyone who knows my mother knows that she would have, had the principal, who was white, not stepped in and warned Mr. Bully that if he didn’t leave her alone she would have the principal’s permission to hit him and would also be kicked out of school.

That was the end of Mr. Bully.

Most of us believe that the kind of prejudice my mom faced is a thing of the past. The thinking goes, “sure prejudice exists but it’s more subtle” or as an older family friend once said, “people no longer spit in your face but in your food.”

But in recent days we’ve all been reminded that this is not true and that the kind of prejudice and open hostility my mom faced fifty years ago is still alive and well in America’s schools.

In recent weeks Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi and Raymond Chase killed themselves. While we are still awaiting key details in some of the cases, we do know this: All of the boys either self-identified as gay or their classmates believed that they were. Billy Lucas was 15 years old, while Asher Brown and Seth Walsh were just thirteen years old yet they faced constantly bullying, ranging from verbal to physical, at the hands of classmates for their perceived sexual orientation. In the case of Tyler Clementi, the college freshman is believed to have jumped from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate allegedly tweeted, then recorded and broadcast an intimate encounter Tyler had with another man.

Sadly these are not the first instances of this type of bullying resulting in death. Last year the suicide of 11-year old Carl Walker made national headlines when he hung himself after being teased relentlessly by classmates who accused him of being gay.

Let me ask you a question. If a young student was called the N-word every day for weeks or months on end, and after repeated cries for help finally took his own life, how quickly do you think citizens of all races would take to the streets to protest? Or better yet how quickly would Al Sharpton and co. demand accountability from the school, and elected officials under the threat of casting the kind of media spotlight that people like Don Imus have nightmares about?

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

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Keli Goff is a political blogger for TheLoop21.com. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, March 2008).

No Longer Banned: "Ropes" by Invincible

Back in early 2009, Invincible sent mtvU her video for the song featuring Tiombe Lockhart, “Ropes,” off her debut LP ShapeShifters. The song was written to help bring awareness to issues regarding depression and mental health, and the accompanying music video directed by Mr. Complex is a strong cinematic statement that should have made “Ropes” a shoo-in for getting placement on mtvU. Shortly after submitting a final version of the video, the folks at MTV let Invincible know that her video was approved to air. Unfortunately, MTV's Standards Department stepped in and rejected the video at the last minute on the basis that the video was "problematic" and had "suicidal undertones."

Invincible responded to this rejection, quickly shooting a viral video outside of the MTV's Times Square headquarters, asking viewers what they thought of the video being censored and whether they believed it was "problematic" to speak openly about depression, mental health, and suicide.

The video went on to garner tens of thousands of views on online video-sharing websites. The mtvU rejection became a story in itself as media outlets such as Salon, True/Slant, and All Hip Hop blasted MTV for their decision and Invincible's supporters sent personal letters to MTV demanding that the video be played. It's taken some time, but nearly a year and a half later, "Ropes" is premiering on mtvU. The video found supporters at Half Of Us, a project housed within MTV that confronts issues of mental health on college campuses. Half Of Us joined the chorus of people championing "Ropes," leading to a resolution with MTV: the Standards Department lifted their ban and cleared the video for airtime, and now "Ropes" is airing on mtvU and mtvU.com as part of the Half Of Us campaign.

Read More @ EmergenceMedia

Left of Black: Bullying and the Crisis of Masculinity

Left of Black:

Bullying and the Crisis of Masculinity

by Mark Anthony Neal



The recent suicide death of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover raises troubling questions about the incidence of bullying in our schools and other places where children interact. Earlier this month Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old African-American boy from Springfield, MA, took his own life, in response to the bullying he endured everyday at school. According to reports, Walker-Hoover was repeatedly taunted for “being gay.” That Walker-Hoover, who was not queer identified, was the target of homophobic vitriol speaks volumes about the challenges faced in society that has yet to fully interrogate how we raise and socialize our boys.



Thanks to best-selling books Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (the inspiration for the film Mean Girls) and the emergence of YouTube, parents and schools are hypersensitive to the incidence of bullying in the lives children and the sophisticated ways that children deploy technology in such activities. But bullying, now as always, is symptomatic of our inability as a society to deal adequately with difference—sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, gendered, etc.—in meaningful ways.



While children usually understand about the consequences of bullying their peers—the ways they will be punished, for example—there’s still a continued skittishness within schools to actually deal with the reality of difference. This is particularly the case with discussions of sexual orientation, where some feel that focusing on sexual preference encourages behavior that far too many still view as “deviant” behavior. That the term “gay” has become an umbrella term for all things “uncool” in the lives of American children and teenagers, speaks to how dismissive we are of homophobia in our society.



Bullying of course takes many forms, but anyone who has spent any amount of time in the company of boys is well aware of how terms like “punk,” “faggot,” "bitch-ass" and “pussy” are part of the normative discourse of American boyhood. Even those boys, who are not necessarily invested in bullying, find themselves employing such terms as a form of protection, lest they also be targeted (as was the case when I was a boy). Unfortunately such behavior has long been relegated to the status of “boys being boys,” even as it articulates a troubling misogyny among other things. When such bullying escalates to the level of violence, as a society we are happy to enact punitive responses to the offenders without ever interrogating the root cause of the behavior.



Often lost in these responses is that this particular form of bullying is evidence of a general crisis of masculinity in our society, where boys and men, are all too often uncomfortable in the skins that they inhabit. While there is evidence that the behavior of some childhood bullies portends adult behavior tethered to more complex emotional and mental issues, there also little denying that many boys engage in bullying behavior against other boys, because they have been socialized to believe that’s what “real” boys and “real” men do. Bullying, particularly that which targets other male peers as “less than masculine,” helps masks anxieties about what real boyhood/manhood is supposed to be. Indeed such anxiety and apprehension about masculinity was so palpable in the life of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover that he chose to take his life rather than deal with the daily reminders that somehow he didn’t play to type.



While Walker-Hoover’s tragic death brings necessary attention to the consequences of bullying in our society, the bullying will continue unless we allow our boys and men to be comfortable with who they are, rather than performing some idea of what real maleness is supposed to be.



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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books including the recent New Black Man.

Phyllis Hyman: A Diva for All Time

Remembering Phyllis Hyman

by Mark Anthony Neal

"She's more important than her music — if they must be separated — and they should be separated when she has to pass out before anyone recognizes she needs a rest and i say i need aretha's music"— Nikki Giovanni.

When Nikki Giovanni wrote "A Poem for Aretha" it was as much a cautionary tale as a celebration of Aretha Franklin's groundbreaking talents. She wrote it during what was arguably the height of Franklin's popularity — a moment that established her as the most popular black female entertainer ever. And it was that immense popularity that most concerned Giovanni, as she wondered aloud whether or not Franklin would ultimately visit the same fate as so many other black women entertainers before her. Names like Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips (who was no doubt dying a slow death when Giovanni's poem was first published) are more than footnotes to black musical genius; they are constant reminders of the travails and dangers that black women face in an industry that seemingly cares little for them and has always seemed to place more value in their sexuality than their talent. One can only wonder if Phyllis Hyman had ever read Giovanni's poem before she took her own life in June of 1995. Though Hyman never achieved the popular success Franklin did, she still stands as a diva among divas.

Living All Alone gave audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Pittsburgh, as a teen Hyman didn't think herself much a singer. As she told Jacquelyn Powell in a 1981 profile, "I didn't know I could sing… Not like Nancy Wilson, or Dionne Warwick." But pianist Dick Morgan thought different, and after hearing Hyman sing at local clubs in Pittsburgh in the early '70s, asked her to tour with his band. It was while Hyman was doing regular gigs in New York City at Rust Brown's and Mikell's in 1975 that bandleader and producer Norman Connors first heard her. A year later he tapped her to sing the lead in his version of the Stylistics' classic "Betcha by, Golly Wow." Nearly 30 years after its release, it remains one of Hyman's most memorable performances.

Hyman initially signed as a solo artist with Buddah Records, which had difficulty finding the right material to make her the crossover star they wanted her to be. Though Hyman would have minor success singing mainstream R&B and disco, as witnessed on tracks like "You Know How to Love Me" (1979) and "Can't We Fall in Love Again," recorded with former Miles Davis sideman Michael Henderson in 1981 (the duo was first paired together on Connor's "You Are My Starship" in 1976), she was more at home within the jazz and pop-jazz idioms. Though she didn't sell many records during her two-album stint at Buddah, Phyllis Hyman (1977) and Somewhere in My Lifetime (1978) remain a testament to her link to some of the great torch singers, such as Nancy Wilson and Abbey Lincoln. Hyman was eventually given the chance to fully shine within the jazz tradition when she accepted a role in the Broadway production Sophisticated Ladies, a revue of Duke Ellington's music in which she sang Ellington classics such as "Prelude to A Kiss," "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" and a stirring, heart-wrenching rendition of "In a Sentimental Mood."

Hyman received a Tony Award nomination in 1981 for her work in Sophisticated Ladies but Arista, her label at the time, failed to capitalize on her new found mainstream popularity, instead trying to re-capture the dance-floor magic of "You Know How to Love Me," her first "hit" for the label. The awful "Riding the Tiger" from her 1983 recording Goddess of Love is an example of these efforts, though the song did help introduce Hyman's music to gay audiences, who reportedly embraced the song as a favorite at drag performances in the mid-'80s. Hyman would finally find a label receptive to her unique talents in Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International Records (PIR).

Living All Alone (1987) powerfully captured the full range of Hyman's vocal gifts, but it also gave her audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. As her friend and manager Glenda Gracia told writer Esther Iverem, Hyman was "uncovering the riddles of stuff in her life…sometimes when you start that process, the demons that you confront may have more for you than you might have thought you would find." Part of the process for Hyman was dealing with very real feelings of loss after the death of her friend, songwriter Linda Creed, the long-time writing partner of Thom Bell (the duo penned "Betcha By Golly Wow" among other classics). Creed's "Old Friend," which appears on Living All Alone, was one of the last songs she wrote before her death.

Four years later Hyman returned with Prime of My Life (1991), which proved to be the most mature recording of her career as well as the last released during her lifetime. Tracks like "Meet Me on The Moon" and "When I Give My Love (This Time)" exhibit what producer Barry Eastmond refers to as "Phyllisisms." The record also contained her only chart-topping R&B hit, "Don't Wanna Change the World," which ironically was a throwback to her dance-diva days, complete with her first rap performance. Though the title of the album suggested that the then 42-year-old Hyman was at peace with her life and career, "Living in Confusion," a track she co-wrote with Kenneth Gamble and Terry Burrus, suggested a deeper darker reality. In the song's chorus Hyman sang, "seems like I'm always going through changes/Living in confusion…" Things took an even darker turn when Hyman's mother and grandmother died within a month of each other in 1993.

Hyman was working on what would be her last recording, ironically titled I Refuse to Be Lonely when she chose to take her own life on June 30, 1995, leaving behind a note that stated simply "I'm tired. I'm tired." When I Refuse to Be Lonely was released in November of 1995, it became one of Hyman's fastest selling recordings. According to Esther Iverem, so much of the recording was supposed to be about how Hyman "claws back from the brink, back from the place where she fought depression, loneliness, alcoholism, obesity and a consuming anger at lesser voices enjoying more commercial success."

Hyman's depression is telling in that the male-centered recording industry has rarely dealt with how gender impacts how artists are perceived, or with the way various artists choose to deal with the pressures of celebrity and the constant need to please fans, producers and A&R folk. Women artists are also forced to conform to some perceived notion of beauty. More than six feet tall, Hyman also battled her weight, often ballooning close to 300 pounds. Though folks remember Dinah Washington dying of a drug overdose, few remember that she overdosed on diet pills — an addiction directly related to her feelings that her body wasn't the right size. More often than not, women in the industry who struggle with these issues are described as "difficult," as was the case with Hyman, or even Mary J. Blige during earlier moments in her career. While these women may indeed have been "difficult," folks in the industry rarely ask why, or more specifically, how their experiences in a decidedly patriarchal and often sexist industry may have informed their personalities.

And it's not just women in the entertainment industry. As Iverem wrote in a 1996 Essence feature on Hyman's death, her passing "offers a particularly poignant example of the private struggles that many talented, intelligent black women face." Many women face this reality with a resolve that suggests that such darkness is in fact inevitable. In her book If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holliday scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin reflects on an interview Mary J. Blige did with Dream Hampton in 1997, where the "Queen of Hip Hop Soul" responds to the invocation of Billie Holiday with the quip "Dead. Like Phyllis Hyman. Dead." According to Griffin, for a young woman like Blige, the lives of Hyman and Holiday are only a reminder of "Death. Pain. Sadness."

In the end we are only left with the music of Phyllis Hyman. Though the recently released Ultimate Phyllis Hyman is a good introduction to her music, fans might want to instead take a look at The Legacy of Phyllis Hyman, which was released in 1996. For those desiring to hear Hyman at her most exquisite, it might be worth the effort to track down a copy of Pharaoh Sanders's obscure Love Will Find a Way (1978), on which Hyman sings the gems "As You Are" and "Love is Here." As Roberta Flack told mourners at a memorial service for Hyman, "God is a spirit, music is spiritual so every time you hear Phyllis sing she lives."