In Mel Y. Chen’s book “Animacies”, she talks about  biopolitics and it brought my attention to how certain kinds of diseases are associated with certain types of bodies in different spaces. The first diseases that came to my mind were aids and cancer.

I did some research on HIV/AIDS and cancer awareness videos and I noticed what kind of bodies they used in their commercials and how the world perceives certain diseases.. Looking at HIV/AIDS awareness videos I noticed the presence of black people and how crucial their presence is in such a  commercial. When I look at cancer ads or most ads on YouTube and TV, the white body is very prominent. One has to search hard to find an ad of for example, detergent or cars, with black people but search “HIV/AIDS awareness videos” and you will never fail.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word cancer is the notion of it on a white female body. In Sierra Leone, cancer is considered a “white” disease and the awareness of it in West Africa is very limited from my experience. A big problem with the places I come from is that they are very unaware of different kinds of diseases and mental illnesses. In 2010 I visited my very small village in Sierra Leone and I remember some of the residents had told me that there was a w
oman in the village that took a bath in the stream and a demon had possessed her. When I asked how they knew she was demon possessed, they described her behaviour and it was apparent she had epilepsy or something of the sort. I also remember a woman in a salon in Nigeria describing a young child as a snake when he could’ve been in a vegetative state.

Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are considered “white” diseases and is very much dismissed as a possession or something that can be easily cured with some words of encouragement. It is something that needs to be of great importance in these type of countries because it puts people with these type of illnesses at an extreme disadvantage.

A lot of things come to mind when I hear the word ‘hip hop’, but the very first thing that I think of is ‘video vixen’. This might be due to the context to which the question is in; nevertheless it comes to mind. I can think of a hundred other things related to hip hop but I cannot picture a hip hop music video without big breasted, big booty and half naked black women.

In most of our hip hop music videos today, the black woman is depicted as a bombshell freak desired by all the men involved with the particular song BUT cannot be mistaken as ‘wifey material’. In “miss me” by drake, he raps about two real life black strippers that he dated but goes on to say, ‘I don’t judge her but I could never love her’. Even Chris Brown who is known for cheating and beating his ex-girlfriend, Rihanna, sings about ‘these hoes aint loyal’ in his single “loyal”. The rapper Kanye West is a good example of a rapper who dated a video vixen, Amber Rose, and l later on degrades her to being a whore after his marriage to Kim Kardashian.

“ By the way, it’s very hard for a woman to wanna be with someone that’s been with Amber Rose.

“I had to take 30 showers before I got with Kim.”

Amber Rose who has only been linked to two rappers, being married to one, is called a whore compared to Kim Kardashian who has been linked to many guys in Hollywood and who famously came up by her sex tape. Slut shaming is wrong and this is not a matter of ‘who is really the whore’, rather, it’s criticisms on which bodies are considered defiant and which are not under similar circumstances. Amber Rose is a black woman and as Dionne P. Stephens and April L. Fewin discuss in their article “Hip Hop Honey or Video Ho: African American Preadolescents’ Understanding of Female Sexual Scripts in Hip Hop Culture”, black women are depicted as the Diva, Gold Digger, Freak, Dyke, Gangster Bitch, Sister Savior, Earth Mother, and Baby Mama in hip hop. Amber Rose does play the role of the freak in music videos, which Kanye Wests takes advantage of by insinuating that she is a whore as opposed to his white bodied wife.

References:

Stephens, Dionne P., and April L. Few. “Hip Hop Honey or Video Ho: African American Preadolescents’ Understanding of Female Sexual Scripts in Hip Hop Culture.” Sexuality & Culture 11.4 (2007): 48-69. Web.

“”Miss Me” Lyrics.” DRAKE LYRICS. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.

“”Loyal” Lyrics.” CHRIS BROWN LYRICS. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.

“Kanye West and Amber Rose: What REALLY Went on between Model and Kim’s Husband.” Mirror. N.p., 21 July 2015. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.

I never understood the problem African American women had with interracial dating between black men and white women until I came to Canada. Before I go on I have to say, it is nothing personally to do with white women and mostly to do with SOME black men(Don’t wanna get hit with the #notallblackmen).

I am open to dating white men like a lot of other black girls in Vancouver but it becomes difficult when the majority of white men that hit on you see you as a conquest. “You know I like black girls”, “I have never tried hot chocolate”, “You are pretty for a black girl” are among the racist pickup lines black girls encounter on a normal night out. I mean even if they don’t say it, one wonders if they are thinking it. I speak mainly on white men here because most guys from other races date within their race, at least from my observance.

No Big deal, at least we still have black men right? WRONG! The stereotype of the ‘Angry Black woman’ has hunted us for too long and you’d think black men would know better, with all the stereotypes they have to deal with. The amount of times I have heard a black guy say to me that he’d rather date a white girl over a black girl because we are too much to deal with, is ridiculous. I have judged your whole existence as a normal functioning human being and we will never be having an intellectual conversation about race, gender, politics…or anything of significance after such ignorance. BUT for those who are curious and don’t particularly need a history lesson, I’ll tell you why this evidently makes me heated, summarized in a quote from “Angry Black Woman: An Exploration of Black Women’s Responses to Interracial Relationships” by Erica Chito Childs

“As a Black woman, it is difficult enough to have to deal with whites who [act] as if [Black] is inferior, but it is even harder to have your own men act like white is better and systematically choose white women over you; it is hard not to get angry because it feels as if no one values your worth as a woman. You grow up with these men all your life, but then you’re not good enough to be a wife…. It’s disrespectful and degrading”

I have overheard a black African guy tell another black African guy when he had just arrived in Vancouver that he should just ignore the black girls in Vancouver and go for the white girls because he already had enough of that back home. The notion of white superiority is still rampant in our black communities and is evident in media with black men systematically choosing white women over black women after gaining success.

And if you light skin black girls are not relating because you don’t have this problem, it’s probably because you are LIGHT SKIN.  I know ya’ll have your own struggles but this isn’t one of them.

In “Bhangra Music and the Engendering of Diaspora”, Gayatri Gopinath speaks on how identity and culture is interpreted in music, namely Bhangra music outside of India. I thought of the culture I grew up in and how I can relate to this in terms of music and how it has been changed to be commodified.

In Nigeria, music has evolved in such a way that it is not nearly as traditional as a few decades ago to accommodate the younger generation. In Nigeria, music was mostly sung in traditional languages and was a political tool to unify the people in their struggle after colonialism and the effects of it. Over time it has become an art form to relate to the younger generations by the inclusion of English.

While there is change within Nigeria itself, there is also a disconnect outside Nigeria with what Nigerian music is, with the inclusion of rap, and African American rap artists to be commodified by the ‘Nigerian American’ audience. Today we see a significant amount of Nigerian songs with famous African American hip hop artists and the nomination of Nigerian artists in American award shows under the international music category. This shows how art has become commodified in music and the loss of cultural identity as we move towards American standards to be recognized. It is hard to recreate culture in Nigeria itself, talkless of outside Nigeria.

It can also be argued that the music in the west caters to the younger generation of Nigerian Americans/Canadians because of their difference in identity and experiences. With that, there still holds that it is impossible to recreate culture outside of its original space. It is also important to note the lack of authenticity in the music and a variety of other things that try to emulate culture.

References:

Gopinath, Gayatri. “”Bombay, U.K., Yuba City”: Bhangra Music and the Engendering of Diaspora.” Diaspora Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 4.3 (1995): 303-21. Web.

“Counterpublics are, by definition, formed by their conflict with the norms and contexts of their cultural environment, and this context of domination inevitably entails distortion. Mass publics and counterpublics, in other words, are both damaged forms of publicness, just as gender and sexuality are, in this culture, damaged forms of privacy.” (Publics and Counterpublics, p.63)

In “Pedro Zamora’s Real World of Counterpublicity: Performing an Ethics of the Self”, Esteban Munos uses Pedro Zamora from the Real World as an example of someone who defies white normativity, and heteronormativity in a majoritarian space. In a society where everything is written for us to perform whether it’s by our specific cultures, state/institutions, or popular culture, it is hard to defy the norm. One of the reasons it is hard to go against the grain is that we do not recognize that most of what we learn and adopt has been imposed on us. Marilyn Frye’s Birdcage of Sexism analogy can be used to discuss the issue of conforming. Being in a Bird cage means living by societies standards without question because it is the norm.

I grew up in Nigeria and the culture influenced everything I believed in. I had a very simplistic view of the world and never had proper discourse on the complexities of gender, race and sexuality. I came to Vancouver with the same views, and never even thought of sexism because I was taught essentialist views of gender and race.

I try to challenge myself and wonder what it means for me as a black African woman to counteract the norm which is even harder as a Christian. Our institutions and morals are mostly based on Christianity so does defying the norm and not conforming mean that I am going against my faith? And then there is the issue of colonialism and the imposition of Christianity by white missionaries but I digress.

References:

Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1983. Print.

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone, 2002. Print.

Munoz, Esteban.  “Pedro Zamora’s Real World of Counterpublicity: Performing an Ethics of the Self”.  Disidentifications: Queers of Colour and the performance of politics. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota UP, 1999.

When I came to Canada for University, I became color conscious, not only because I am clearly a minority but because my identity as a Sierra Leonean who lived in Nigeria had been replaced by my blackness. My Nigerian personality, my humor, accent, and all the things about me that are not necessarily influenced by my African culture were dismissed through black popular culture.

Stuart Hall speaks on Race and Identity in terms of Black popular culture in his article “What is this Black in Black in Popular Culture”. He talks about the essentialist view that our racial differences are natural and how we perform the scripts written for us by black popular culture, which is placed by the white hegemony. America as a main global power has influence on the rest of the world and in this case, in terms of black popular culture.

In my home country there is a way in which we perform our culture and anything outside it, is seen as defiant but I feel even back at home my identity was less limited because in North America I am black. I am expected to act a certain way in which I am not accustomed to. The way black women are depicted in black popular culture is a disadvantage to all black women. Although I am a boisterous, strong, no nonsense person, it really has nothing to do with the color of my skin but greatly influenced by my culture and my life experiences.

I find that people in Vancouver use the word “sassy” to describe me even when I don’t do something necessarily “sassy”. I wonder if it has to do with the color of my skin and I wonder if I was white and had the same personality, I would be described as “sassy”. Being black in Canada always has me in the state of wonder, wondering if that person said that because of my skin, wondering why when I do something silly, it is considered “ghetto”, wondering why when I defend myself, people say don’t mess with the black girl. It is a lot of pressure to act black when there is so much to my identity that is not necessarily black.

I admit that I do perform according to my culture and black popular culture but apart from those things I am me. I swim, I love to paint, I listen to rock and occasionally country music. I am boisterous but I am also empathetic, scared, sensitive and many other things that make up my identity. As Indie Arie sings “I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am not your expectations…I am a soul that lives within”.

References:

Hall, Stuart.  “What is this Black in Black in Popular Culture”.  Black Popular Culture. ED. Gina Dent. Seattle WA Bay Press, 1992

“”I Am Not My Hair” Lyrics.” INDIA.ARIE LYRICS. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2015.