I'm Not A Racist. But...

Yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw my overgrown furry eyebrows staring back at me. I'd already been thinking of getting my nails done but I was feeling a bit lazy. Seeing the fur really sealed the deal though. It was clearly time to head over to my local Silver Lake beauty shop, the same place I've been going for the past seven years.

When I get my nails/waxing done, I don't have much to say. I just want to chill out and leave a big tip. Occasionally I'll get to talking with the ladies that work there about our kids, but really, I just want them rip the hair away and make my nails look cute.

So, I'm watching TV, my freshly painted nails are drying, I'm reminiscing about seeing Depeche Mode in Las Vegas this time last year. Life is good.

And then I overhear this very blond, very, "Where'd I set my BlackBerry?" type, chatting with the women working on her hands and feet.

"So what's your name?" she asked the lady scrubbing away her heel calluses.

The woman paused her scrubbing and said in her lightly accented English, "My name is May."

Blondie started talking very loudly and very s.l.o.w.l.y --the kind of condescending voice I've heard used before with the very deaf and elderly, the very stupid...and people whose native language isn't English.

"Oh, May. That's -- a -- nice -- name. What -- country -- do -- you -- come -- from, -- May? Cambodia?"

Now, if I was May, I'd have been trying to give Blondie a foot fungus or something. But May was nice and replied, "I'm from Vietnam."

What Blondie doesn't know is that May has been here for 15 years. She got here in 1992. She's got two teenage sons that she's putting through a private high school and her English is really good.

Blondie continued her painful chatter. "I was close! Vietnam! It's sort of like Cambodia, right? Are you sure you're not Cambodian? I mean, you all look really similar to Cambodians, don't you?"

It was said with the kind of authority that let me know that Blondie fully expected May to agree with her. And May wasn't going to call her out and say, "All Asians don't look alike and bitch, I said I'm Vietnamese." May wasn't going to ask Blondie if she meets Germans and tells them, "Are you sure you're not from France?"

May pretended she didn't understand. She just smiled and nodded at Blondie.

I just wanted to come to the nail shop, get my stuff waxed, get my nails done, and try to forget that 15 years ago when May got here, the 1992 LA Riots had just gone down. But no, Blondie was saying the kind of stuff that made me think she was on that Simi Valley jury that acquitted the officers that struck Rodney King 56 times.

Blondie wasn't finished with her questions. She moved on to the woman working on her hands. "So what's your name?"

This woman told her, "My name is May."

Blondie must have never met two Brittanys or two Stephanies that work in the same place because she said, "Oh, are you all named May?"

The Lord saved me from hearing more because the girl that does my waxing came to tell me she was ready for me. I'd rather have hair ripped off my body than have to hear Blondie continue to question the ladies working on her hands and feet.

Now, Blondie isn't hitting anybody with a baton 56 times. She's not on the radio calling black women offensive things. She didn't say the n-word in a comedy club. She's just trying to make small-talk with the ladies at the nail shop while she's supporting their business, right? So what's the big deal? She's just some close-minded woman talking too loudly, right?

Well, I'm sure Blondie thinks she's not racist.

Every day, I drive through the areas of this city that were decimated by the LA Riots. They started fifteen years ago yesterday. Today when I drive around this city, I'll be driving through a part of town that was on fire fifteen years ago. Even though now there's a Starbucks on the corner of Slauson and Western, there's still not a Barnes and Noble or a Borders in all of South-Central LA. High school graduation rates are like apartheid South Africa's. Unemployment is still high. But we're shocked when folks snap and decide to burn some stuff up.

In America we all want to sit around and say, "I'm not racist." It's always someone else thinking and saying and doing the things that hurt and cause so much pain. We don't think the stuff that happens on a daily basis in our own individual interactions is a big deal. We don't think the policies that are in place have anything to do with racism. We tell ourselves that these days most of the racism that happens is some huge thing like Rodney King getting beaten or Don Imus saying what he did. As long as we can squash the egregious acts of racism with public apologies to Al Sharpton, and as long as Oprah's still a billionaire, then we act like it's business as usual.

As long as the poor people of color stay down in South-Central, than it's all good. As long as May doesn't say anything to Blondie, it's all good.

As long as nobody riots, it's all good.

You Said It First! Who Said It First?

Ah, Don Imus.

I saw him on the Today show yesterday and wowzer, I have no idea how old he is, but the man looks like he's got one foot in the grave. No wonder he sticks to radio instead of TV. Don't you think he could use more than a two week vacation? I really think his bosses should do him a favor and make it a permanent vacation. It just seems like doing his show is taking way too much of a toll on what must have been, at one time, some spectacularly good looks.

Ok, I'll stop being sarcastic. Or, at least I'll try. It's just that with all the discussion about "The Don Imus Issue", I keep hearing a few things that have got me thinking beyond Don Imus.

First, I've heard a couple of folks share the idea that calling black women "nappy-headed hos" originated in the black community. We started it, rap music started it...and so folks can't be mad if Don Imus says it. It's a double standard!

Hmm. I don't know if black people and rap music really started the use of this terminology. Sure, it's internalized now, and some of us do use that language, but I don't think we started it.

I was commenting on someone else's blog that there are plenty of black people that dance at parties and bump in their rides to tunes like the currently popular Fat Joe and L'il Wayne song "Make it Rain". Yes, that song, like so many others, prominently features the word "hos" and features a video where guys are throwing money on black and Latina women who are busily gyrating like strippers. But if the Pussycat Dolls gyrate like strippers, they get a TV show and get called superstars. What???

Anyway, I digress.

YES, Snoop, 50 Cent, Jay-Z and all the rest quite frequently use the n-word, call folks bitches, and hos and regularly feature the aforementioned scantily clad black and Latina women in their videos. My question is, who's paying these rappers to make records like that?

Jay-Z may be head of Def Jam records but, hello, Def Jam is not black-owned. It's owned by Universal Music Group...which is owned by French-run conglomerate Vivendi. And who's the CEO of Vivendi? A guy named Jean-René Fourtou.

Now, imagine if Jean-René were to suddenly call up Jay-Z and say, "Look Jay, you're a really talented rapper, but you need to write rhymes that are not sexist or racist, or else I'm going to drop you from our label."

Can you imagine that? Yeah, I can't either. Reason being, 70% of rap records are bought by white people, primarily by the 18-24 male demograpic. Those young white males have a whole lot of disposable income, and so the records get made, because certainly, Jean-René probably has a place along the Seine to pay for.

I've heard some people say that black people don't complain about rappers so it's not fair that we complain about Imus. Um, that's just not true. The very same black people who've been upset about 50 Cent, Snoop and Jay-Z calling black women ho's are upset now. The problem is that mainstream media hasn't given those prior complaints any coverage.

Some of you all may not know about the infamous Nelly song "Tip Drill". If you don't, good for you that you were spared exposure to an incredibly lewd and lascivious song with an even more sexually explicit video. (Don't ask me how I saw it...my inability to turn away from train-wrecks is another issue.)

Now, in this video, Nelly swipes a credit card between the shaking butt cheeks of a light-skinned black woman wearing only a barely-there thong. It was disgusting. Absolutely horrifyingly sexist and racist on so many levels. But, was the New York Times or the Washington Post calling for Nelly's firing from his record company? Nope. Instead, it was the black women of Spelman College that led the charge against the song and protested Nelly's potential participation in a leukemia fundraiser at the school.

I also didn't hear any record company executives complaining about Nelly. In fact, I didn't hear anyone in the mainstream media complaining at all. It was further proof that when it comes this stuff, it doesn't really matter if black people complain about being called bitches and hos because we aren't the ones buying the songs. So, who cares what we think! This is also why Imus is probably only going to get a two-week vacation instead of a permanent one...sure, it's a hot story now, but after all, and I could be wrong here, I don't think many black folks listen to Imus. Again, it's that white male demograpic/dollar that advertisers want and Imus draws them in.

I also find myself thinking how none of the aforementioned rappers feature nappy-haired women. Their videos deal almost exclusively with black women who wear weaves. So, nappy hair...yeah, I remember being 8 or 9 and one of my aunts was trying to brush my hair. She smacked me on the head with the brush and started complaining, "You have the nappiest hair of any mixed girl on earth! What is wrong with you?"

Sure, my aunt said the word waaay before Don Imus did, and she used it in a negative way, but the thing is, who invented the word? I'm sure African's back in the day didn't sit around and say, "Girl, your hair is sooo nappy! You need to get your relaxer touched up!"

I also find myself having a hard time believing that the first black people off of slave ships just decided to started calling each other nappy-headed ho's without hearing someone else calling them that first...someone who owned them and told them they weren't fully human. (Wonder who that could be?)

Generations later, someone taught my aunt, and every other black woman born in the Western Hemisphere, to think that our hair is unattractive in it's natural state. As much as some folks want to, thankfully, advocate for a return to "natural hair" in this country, and as much as there are books like Nappy Hair, it's still an insult in the black community to say that someone's hair is nappy.

So, is there a double standard? Maybe in some ways there is, but I think our issues are more complex than just simply saying, "Well, black people, you did it first so don't get mad!" We have to go beyond that surface level argument and be prepared to talk about why we do and say the things we do. If we don't know the root cause, we can never cure the disease.

And, like any good school teacher should tell kids that say, "He hit me first!", it doesn't matter who did it first, if you did it too, well then, you're both wrong.