Antoine Dodson’s Sister: On Invisibility as Violence

(Click here for original news story)

We are in the midst of Antoine Dodson Mania! For those that don’t know him, he’s the now famous man who fought off the intruder that climbed into his sister’s second story window in the middle of the night and tried to attack her with her daughter present. Remember his reaction? Hilarious right? I mean pissed off that his sister was attacked! LMFAO! So hilarious that now there is this song that has remixed the news clip and turned it into the new summertime hit.  It has even made the iTunes Top 20 and we can purchase sexual assualt for $1.99 and jam all day!  And the star of all this is of course was Antoine Dodson for his “comedic” reaction to violence and the Gregory Brothers for their creative innovation of putting it to song. Sarcasm aside, I must admit that to remix a news story like that is pretty amazing.  But what does it mean to remix violence against black women when our stories are already left behind?

See usually when a black woman is attacked we find some way of making it her fault. We ask questions like what was she wearing? What does she do for a living? How many sexual partners has she had in the past? You know, the typical stuff that removes accountability from her attacker.  But in this case, where a black woman minding her damn business awoke to an attacker in her second story apartment, normal victim-blaming would not work. So now what do we do, because we obviously can’t take a black woman’s story of violence seriously? Well, that’s simple.  We marginalize the attack and focus the story on her brother, whose anger we can exploit because it fits into stereotypes of queer masculinity that provide comic relief. The producers used the footage to lock Antoine in a frame, to capture him in place, in order to tell a story that fits their truths—black women’s confrontations with sexual violence are either not real or unimportant.  Framed under the guise of “news” this masquerades as a story about a woman awaking to an intruder in her bed but is really a story about a funny black man, hilarious in his anger. It was never about her.

I think we have to talk about the power of invisibility. As a child, I participated in the normal debates about what superpowers were the most desirable. For me, invisibility won hands down!  To be able to be invisible was the most super of all the powers.  See, I was nosey so being invisible would allow me to know exactly what my mother and her sisters talked about when I was shooed out of the room.  It would allow me to see what the forbidden boy’s bathroom looked like.  And those moments of being in a new place wouldn’t have felt nearly as terrifying if I could turn on the power of invisibility. Invisibility also afforded protection. Remember Violet from The Incredibles? Invisibility not only protects her from being noticed by the young man she has a crush on, it keeps her safe as she travels though the evil lab in search of her father.  Or Harry Potter and that banging invisibility cloak. It not only allowed him to freely explore the campus, but also often saved his life.

But as invisibility oscillates between power and protection, the ways in which it can be used as a tool of oppression become, well invisible.  For women of color, invisibility is often forced and along with hypervisibility, it is used to as means to discredit and oppress. This is indeed the case with Kelly Dodson, made invisible through the hypervisibility of her brother.  Her invisibility is highlighted by the numerous Antoine Dodson for President T-shirts and paraphernalia that exists in the same space that doesn’t even remember Kelly’s name. (In fact, I had to go back and watch the video to even remember her name; a video I found by merely typing in “Antoine Dodson”).

Kelly Dodson’s experience of violence gets reduced to a fragment of the news segment and even further condensed to one line in the song: “I was attacked by some idiot in the projects.” And while Antoine is central, that too is nothing to be celebrated. He is hypervisible as a caricature for public amusement. We all know Antoine’s name thanks to but the “Bed Intruder Song” the Gregory Brothers have taken his voice chopped it up, synthesized it, and put it to a beat so that they are no longer recognizable as his own.  He wasn’t looking for fame.  He was angry that he had to save his sister from being attacked! Antoine has been hypervisiblized in order to invisibilize Kelly. This is not the invisibility of Harry Potter, free to put it on and take it off, this is an act of erasure.

There is a difference between choosing invisibility and being made invisible.  See the choice of being invisible also comes with the recognition that you’re missing.  When Harry and the crew would return from their invisible outings people often asked where they were.  When you are made invisible through processes of erasure, people don’t even acknowledge that you’re gone.  It’s like you never existed.  So in a story that begins with the headline “a woman awakes” we don’t even acknowledge that the entire segment focused on a man—her brother.  We don’t even acknowledge that the moment she is the most upset and telling us that her young daughter was in the bed with her, the news reporter is talking over her, so this reality exists as background fodder.

As women of color, we have long yearned for black women’s experiences with oppression to be paid attention to.  Our stories of sexual assault, inside and outside of our communities never make the evening news.  And now, when we finally are awarded a few minutes of attention, we are  simultaneously erased.  We are further erased through the music that has increasingly been used to enslave rather than liberate us.  It is the music that has put us in a trance and even we are singing along to a black woman being attacked.  Singing along until we agree with her erasure.  Until her erasure becomes more of a reality than the attack.  Every note we sing erases Kelly Dodson.

I demand a remix to this remix!  One who’s beat doesn’t influence your body to sway and your lips to smile as you sing the words.  One that instead causes your body to curl over in pain and your eyes to water.  One that makes you feel sad, or better yet angry that this happened! Can we remix this remix into a story that centers the black woman who was attacked?

So here is my letter to Kelly Dodson.

Dear Kelly,

We know that in these conversations about this internet sensation, YOU are missing.  We know that when they’re jamming to the music they aren’t thinking about YOU.  We know that you were never central, not in the original news story, not in the song, and not now.  All of this has been about its about trivializing your brother’s anger (characterizing as “emotions running high” instead of emotions running normal for someone whose family member was attacked), the creativity of these white boys (a group who has always profited off the abuse of black women), and the power and creative force of technology.  Well the Crunk Feminist Collective says it’s all about you!  We are sorry that this happened to you.  We are sorry that when you should be at peace in your home you were attacked.  We are sorry and angry that your little girl had to be present for that. We are sorry that you no longer feel safe in your own home.  We are grateful that you had someone home to help you and we are sorry that this is happening to your story.  We want to center you. We want this moment to be used to talk about the realities of our communities as spaces of vulnerability and danger for women of color.  We want to remember you as we work to build the communities we want to see, because lets be real, we have learned to make due but for us are neighborhoods are often scary as shit. We live in a state of violence that is so common that people can sing along to it.

We understand that you live in a community like many of us, one that is so far lacking in social safety nets that that you’re brother had to envision mechanism of accountability that would hold up regardless of a response from a police state that more often than not disregards violence done on the bodies of black women.  We completely understand the realities that would make your brother tell your attacker “you don’t have to confess we’re looking for you we’re gonna find you” and when he does that he’s “gonna beat his ass and then call the police while I beat his ass because I want you to feel what you made my sister feel.” And we don’t think his or your anger is comedic and we keep his statements in mind as we attempt to build an anti-violence movement that doesn’t combat violence with violence while recognizing the difficulty of doing so.

From this point on when we hear the “Bed Intruder Song” we will force ourselves to center you, and we will think about where we stand in our anti-violence movement.  We will dedicate a moment of silence to making a safe world for women and girls like you and your daughter.  We want to let you know that this is not okay and we are fed the fuck up!  Now Run Tell Dat Homeboy!

: : : : : : : : : : :

How do you solve a problem like Montana?

Montana Fishburne in 2006

Since Montana Fishburne’s ignoble entry into public consciousness, many have publically chastised Laurence Fishburne’s teenage daughter for lack of sense, sanity and unblemished behind. I am less interested in casting stones and more interested in the trauma behind the tragedy and without a doubt her porn debut is tragic. Remember her in the CarltonJordan.com video footage as she sat silent, smirking next to the swollen and cubic zirconia laden physique of porn performer Brian Pumper. After he concluded his shifty eyed spiel on his newest “girl”, she chimed in with a nervous response to a vague and rambling question by an interviewer from the web site. Makeup free, her curly hair haphazardly pulled back, the eighteen year old looked like a college student catching a harried breakfast in the school cafeteria before a morning class. Casual attire notwithstanding, she sounded desperate to impress, “I have a lot of at home experience,” she said of her porn debut. She was going for old hand. I understand the impulse, not wanting to feel like a novice. She was declaring her graduation from the kid’s table all miniature proportions and juvenile conversation. ” Her hands flush against her décolletage, eyebrows raised, smizing (© Tyra), she boasted, “I mean, I know what I do and I do it well.” Ok, Montana. “Was this a goal for you?” The interviewer then asked. She replied, “I mean it wasn’t a goal but it’s a step—in a direction.” A direction she had clearly yet to charter. And when the interviewer’s “That’s what up” comment, a seal of approval, elicited a bright, beaming smile from her, I knew she was walking the wrong way.

Bewilderment is what Montana broadcasts underneath the posturing and vacillation. With reports that she was arrested for prostitution, with allegations her high school “boyfriend” Jerome “J-Pipes” Greene is a pimp and news of charges brought against her for assaulting the “ex-girlfriend” of her pimp, I wonder why so many in the blogosphere and twitverse, spend inordinate amounts of time speculating the source of her butt blemishes (cigarette burns, herpes scars). I am not at all interested in the “black girl lost” meme favored by so many concept poor rappers and lazy commentators. They are but invidious indictments to distract from any thoughtful internal reflection by Black men and defenders of their privilege. I am invested in Black women’s health and safety both of which are clearly in peril in the case of Montana Fishburne. I like to laugh but her misadventures do not tickle my funny bone, they curdle my stomach.

Montana summarized a conversation with her mother after news of her porn debut broke for TMZ with two short and telling sentences. “She loves me and is concerned and worried about me. She wants me to be ok and wants whatever is best for me.” Concerned and worried are the operative words and the appropriate responses. Although Montana has tried to spin her porn entrance with sex positive rhetoric about exploring her sexuality, the space that the manipulative tandem of Pumper and Pipes have allowed for that is governed by exploitation. No way is this healthy sexual expression and no way is this Black Hollywood scion well. Worse still, as many observers have noted, is that there is no coming back from these types of sexual indiscretions for Black girls and women. White AND Black America have no sympathy or patience for those who they portray as jezebels. None.

Montana told TMZ that her famous father Laurence Fishburne told her, “I’m not going to speak with you ’till you turn your life around” and “You used your last name. No one uses their real name in porn.” The full extent of their conversation and the background are beyond my scope of knowledge but I would hope that we as kin and concerned folk of young Black girls in need would offer more to them than shame blame and admonitions to get right. Indeed this sister may not want to be well but the love of community, the warm words are family are what encourages, heals, changes. Without them Montana will remain under the spell of the slick talk of plastic pimp porn stars cum rappers like Brian Pumper and scrawny scumbags like Jerome “J Pipes” Greene.

Glitches: The Ballad of Ebony Brown

Black Thought & Questlove in Prospect Park 7.11.2010 (Photo Credit: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn)

Kool G Rap’s “Men at Work” concluded The Roots’ Sunday evening set in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.  In the swelter, a paunchy Black Thought perspired through the rap standard while his legendary crew capered Pip-like in the background. A master of breath control, Black Thought expelled not a pant and it was an exhausting exercise. The Roots are serious showmen and I can’t say that I wasn’t entertained but going to a hip hop concert and hearing that repeated declamation “Men at Work”  prickled as a reminder that for too many “Men at Work” remains hip hop’s definition.

I still soared: rapped all the lines to “The Next Movement” and imitated Greg Nice’s spry wop atop a metal folding chair during he and Smooth B’s impromptu encore performance.  It was only when I had made my way from my old borough to my Harlem digs did my shoulder’s shrink. I cued up a DVR recording of the latest episode of the animated series “The Boondocks” titled “The Lovely Ebony Brown.” It began with the grandfather, Robert Freeman, committing Facebook hara-kiri (deactivation) because of some misadventures in dating or in his words “batshit crazy bitches.” His black male workout buds, Uncle Ruckus and Tom DuBois, took the opportunity to offer relationship council on the next morning’s jog. Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating character whose hyperbole dangerously dovetails with prevailing stereotype, unleashed a diatribe against women like me less than three minutes into the episode. Here are a few choice excerpts:

“The key to happiness is to eliminate all black women from your life.”

“Black women don’t want to be happy.”

“A black woman’s body is the temple of doom.”

“Black women don’t jog. That way they don’t sweat out all them industrial strength toxic avenger chemicals they use to straighten out their hair.”

Forgive me for not LOLing.

"The Lovely Ebony Brown"

The episode proceeds with Robert crossing paths with a young buxom black woman jogger, the episode’s namesake, in contradistinction from Ruckus’ broad indictment (although per the comment section of the Onion AV Club’s episode review, there is some debate about whether black women jog). In fact, the whole episode Ebony Brown absorbs the insults, brushes off the enmity and proves herself the exception to the cabal of angry ugly unfit broke black woman monsters roaming so much of the world’s rampant imagination. Her “perfect” physique (not too Serena Williams), complexion (not too Serena Williams), credit, childlessness, lack of a criminal record are topped by perpetual good humor in the face of all manner of foolishness and on her list of accomplishments is discovering the cure for a devastating disease. In bed with the old flabby Robert, Ebony acquiesces to his preference for lights-off lovemaking by purring “Whatever you like.” (Recall that in 1988, “Whatever you like,” was a deal breaker #akeem #zamunda)

Robert eventually bungles their relationship with his own insecurity and Ebony lets him down oh so easy after he tracks her down in Malaysia delivering aid to typhoon victims, “You look exhausted and stressed and, I don’t know, I don’t want to have this effect on you. You don’t look happy.” Robert returns to his Woodcrest home where Uncle Ruckus, converted by Ebony’s cherubic ways, seeks her out to propose. Robert reactivates his Facebook account with renewed faith in select sepia segments of the opposite sex.

This black woman character’s transformative influence on the ornery Robert and Ruckus offered little levity to my viewing experience. The episode’s whole premise landed as “how does it feel to be a problem?” And Ebony’s superhuman contours, eventually begrudgingly appreciated, reinforce the stratospheric bar that has to be met for black women to break even. It takes so much more for us to be in the black, in life and in imagination, than it does for our other sisters. But that’s not what struck a nerve, it was Ruckus’s opening sermon on our inhumanity. Even in jest, it’s tired. It’s centuries overplayed. The record has long since been worn down. I want to be able to turn on the TV and not hear so much disparagement directed exclusively at us. It’s a downer. How am I to thwart the angry black woman stereotype when television puts me in a sour mood?! (Right now NBC’s “Community” is doing it for me a long with reruns of “Seinfeld”-Kramer be damned-and “The Bernie Mac Show”).

The novelist and poet Paul Beatty once wrote, “not being ticklish, I see laughter as a learned response and not a reflexive one.” Reflecting on his own developing sense of humor, Beatty recalled being the butt of the first joke, a jibe about the darkness of his complexion, he’d ever heard.  I’m the butt of many of the jokes in the television and film I watch.  It’s difficult to laugh from that crappy station although not for “The Boondocks” miraculous Ebony Brown who giggles after being called a wildebeest by Uncle Ruckus at dinner with Robert and then picks up the check. Aaron McGruder is a sharp, if sometimey, satirist but I conserved my chuckles last night. The episode prickled as a reminder that the joke is disproportionately on black women. The skin we’re in.

Hearts led Baby it’s your deal…

Apparently people across the country are outraged by Erykah Badu’s public disrobing.  Perhaps this was a matter of timing.  Had Ms. Badu waited until this month, April, which is Confederacy History Month in southern states like Texas, it might not have been such a big deal–the War of Northern Aggression being all about a state’s sovereign right to disrobe black people and buy and sell black bodies all willy-nilly and everything.  Still, no one wants to admit to viewing a black woman’s body on her own terms.  That shit’s embarrassing.  So much so that Dallas police had to compel one actual witness to come forward so that they could formally charge @fatbellybella with disorderly conduct.

Watch the video.

Guilty as charged. On several counts.  Giving the middle finger to the state by not securing the proper permits to film in the big D (li’l a double-l-a-s)? Guilty.  Resuscitating a beloved dead white man’s violently tragic death for purely niggardly purposes?  Guilty.  Removing one’s clothes for reasons other than satiating the male gaze?  Guilty.  Demanding that said gaze look at a black body in a non-sexual manner?  Guilty.  Publicly proclaiming a black woman’s agency?  Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.  /sarcasm

What was just as interesting as the video was the responses to the video. There were blog posts (here, here and here), Twitter comments, response videos and legal action taken against Erykah. In fact as of today April 20th, Erykah Badu has been charged with disorderly conduct and can either pay a $500 fine, or contest the charge. It will be interesting to see what she does. Which leads me to two questions:

What does it mean that this is a society where women’s bodies are used to sell everything from beer to cars, yet the presence of a Black woman’s body on her own terms prompts fears about children witnesses and fears of nudity? Let me be clear, a nude body and sexual body are not one in the same. But then again, folks don’t have #noactright because the nude white model’s at the MOMA got fondled last week by  museum visitors. This happened in an installation, which is apart of the Marina Abramović restrospective, where patrons must walk between two nude female bodies. Full stop. Jen Carlson, writing in Gothamist says,”the Yugoslavian-born performance artist wouldn’t be doing her job if she didn’t make her audience experience something they haven’t before, no?” Two different settings, high art, nudity and folks acting like they have no home training when it comes to seeing a naked female body. One body violated in the moment and another subject to a public scrutiny that’s still copping its feel.

Back to Erykah and the Dallas Police Department. The Dallas police received hundreds of calls from outside the state in complaint of Badu’s actions.  Badu’s pale(r) inspirations, Matt & Kim, generated no such vitriol.  No one lodged complaints out of concern for the poor children who were exposed to the pasty frostbitten (it looked cold right?) bits of a white woman and man.  Erykah’s video predicts the retribution by a state that wants to keep people on the straight and narrow.  (Who shot ya?) She did apparently disrupt the order despite the fact that most people weren’t even paying attention to her when she did it. Check the disinterest in the bystanders.  Wu-Tang is for the children (RIP, ODB), but according to Dallas police, Erykah ain’t.  The DPD said she didn’t care about the kids grazing the grassy knoll. This despite her own words on Twitter and in numerous interviews about how she worried that they might be traumatized. So she sent out a telepathic signal to let them know her intent.  Next time, Erykah, use an iPhone.

Despite Badu’s best efforts to explain herself (she went on 106 & Park, for fuck’s sake), despite her attempt to be intentional, folks had the unmitigated gall to say that they couldn’t understand the clip as anything more than a publicity stunt.  Which is to say they’d rather not read or listen…to words.  Which explains several (pop) cultural phenomena, including Sarah Palin and blazing hip-hop and R&B, in general.  (To be sure, Sarah Palin and Erykah Badu will never be mentioned in the same blog entry again.)

What good do your words do if they can’t understand you (or stop looking at your ass)?

Let’s write a $500 check to the city of Dallas on behalf of Erykah.  The shit might bounce, but the sentiment won’t.

Co-authored by moyazb, summer of sam, & mdot

They aren’t talking about me…

As a queer woman in love, sometimes it’s hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me. This is deeply disturbing and I don’t know what to make of this shift. Is it age? A creeping conservative that has me running from my radical roots?

I honestly feel like I’m just so sick and tired of being sick and tired, I’d rather overlook the rampant misogyny and sexism on the airwaves to focus on what’s compelling in the music. This is really troublesome because I wasn’t this girl. In fact, there was a time when I abhorred people who gave conditional passes or tried to see the possibilities in a genre I thought was causing so many problems.

I feel like my ambivalence is in some ways a decision to opt out of the foolishness because honestly it’s just too much to bear at times.  The seemingly innocuous radio hit “BedRock” by Young Money has a line penned by the now incarcerated Wayne that I hadn’t paid much attention to.

“I knock her lights out
but she still shine…”

Clever for sure, but violent as fuck. It really gave me pause because it’s the type of lyric that washes over you, sandwiched between lyrics that are more or less memorable. This slightly veiled violence is often dismissed because it’s said playfully and in the context of a medley that suggests a more amorous interpretation.

My reorientation to the misogynoir[1] ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that “All the Way Turnt Up” was a great song because it didn’t objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric “three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow.”

Only one line, one line out of 40 odd rather mundane lyrics (materialism, present controversy, and drug use notwithstanding). Is this a big deal? Should I be offended? I do feel disappointed. Even when things attempt to move away from the formula, MONEY+ CARS + HOES = hit record, they can’t move that far; money+ cars+ hoes = hit record. A song about playing your music loud still has to call on the transformative power of Roscoe Dash, Travis Porter, et. al’s masculinity to make lesbians want to suck a dick? Nice.

I wonder what it means that there are no songs on mainstream radio that challenge the status quo. And when artists do manage to break out, they look so out of place.  Did you see the trippiness that was Erykah “On and On” Badu on 106 and park last year? Painfully awkward. I think folks still don’t know what to do with her next to latest offering Jump Up in the Air, even with Wayne’s ubiquitous co-signing.

So rather than deal with the persistent and pervasive assault on women in the music, I’ve cultivated a world that supports the age old adage in hip hop apologist vernacular that used to make my blood boil; “He’s not talking about me.” In my mostly queer academic class privileged world, I am pretty much immune to the direct fallout of lyrics like the ones I’ve mentioned. They are frustrating and disappointing but their utterance and repetition seem to have less and less direct effect on my movements or relationships with cis gendered black men.

I see my work in this life as trying to address these issues in the music as oppose to retreat from them but I find a fatigued ambivalence the most accurate articulation of where I am right now.  I am trying to figure out what my evolving relationship to rap music will be and I welcome you along for the ride.

*update*

My feelings might be best expressed by this video (what’s up w/ the (non) relationship between the single black girl dancer and the white girl ensemble?). Thanks @Chaseology for the link.

LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.

---

[1] Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.