The Strange Case of Kat Stacks & Fifteen Year Girls Who Sell Themselves (Who Is Looking out for Our Daughters?)

I have two daughters, two beautifully intelligent young ladies who I absolutely adore to no end. But don’t get me wrong; I love my two sons with equal fervor, equal devotion. However, I have a far different relationship with my daughters. I spoil and dote on them incessantly. They are my heart.

And for some strange reason, when I look into the faces of other young ladies, especially young ladies around their same age, I see them, my two daughters; I see their faces. And when I see these young ladies triumph, when I see them succeeding, my heart leaps, and I rejoice. Conversely, when I see or hear of them being abused, mis-used, or exploited, my heart breaks.

My wife says that I have this crazy compulsion that causes me to mentally adopt children, to always assume the role of father, and when these, my adopted children, do something to disappoint me, or when harms befalls them, I take it much too personally.

My wife says that I am the very author of my own miseries.

However, two stories came out this week that causes me to ponder where all the fathers are, that causes me to ponder what goes on in men’s minds. But most of all it causes me to ponder, if so many men seem only too willing to engage in utterly deplorable, immoral behavior, who is looking out for our daughters?

Early Monday morning, a colleague e-mailed me the video embedded below and requested that I pen a few lines in response to the video. [WARNING: NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK]

I think I only got through the first thirty seconds or so before I stopped watching, and then sent a return email in which I politely but crisply requested that my colleague not waste my time by sending me such foolishness. However, later when I got on Twitter, I found that the name of the young lady in the video, Kat Stacks, was trending. And the remarks being made about her were disparaging to say the least.

I went to her site, which has been made private now, and amid the profanity and the stories of sexual conquest, I found this strange, non sequitor narrative of her three suicide attempts. And behind each of these suicide attempts is a relationship with a man, with someone who she turned to for love, for protection, for companionship, gone awry.

Instead of love, instead of protection, instead of real companionship, over and over again, she only found exploitation and abuse. At one point in this narrative she returns to her boyfriend/pimp after being beaten by another man, and he proceeds to beat her as his best friend holds a gun to her head. And during the beating, her only reply is, “Why, Daddy, Why?”.

And though we disparage her actions, in her sleeping with rappers it seems that she is desperately searching for some sense of self and access to some measure of power and control in her own life. In fact, she seems almost like a Superhead-lite, looking to find love in all the wrong places. And though we frown on her actions, she is our creation. She is our child.

But perhaps the most startling story to come out this week is that of a fifteen year old girl who took her seven year old sister with her to a party, ostensibly and ironically because she was concerned about the sister’s safety and didn’t want to leave her alone, and once there the fifteen year old began to have sex with various men in exchange for money. At some point, this fifteen year old girl even offered up her seven year old sister as well.

Yesterday, Trenton, New Jersey, police announced the arrest of twenty-seven men in connection with that case. Twenty-seven? You mean that that many men actually participated? You mean to tell me that not one person at the party had the courage, the temerity to stand up for those two children? No one said it was wrong?

One common thread connects these two stories. In both stories, any number of people, of men, stood in line to abuse and exploit these young women; however, very few seemed willing to stand up for them.

While we condemn Kat Stacks’ actions as deplorable and immoral, while we refer to her as a ho or a slut, what about those rappers and other celebrities who seemed only too willing to participate in the exploitation? They seemed only too willing to use their fame and notoriety as weapons to demean and destroy. These nasty motherfuckers filthy little men deserve more than a little of our ire.

And if you want to form a lawless vigilante mob to roll through Trenton and pull those twenty-seven men from their cells and stomp the very life out of them, please swing by and pick me up. But before we go after them, let’s round up all the other men (women) who attended the party, who knew what was going on, but stood by and said nothing; they are as culpable as those who actually participated. How could you stand by and just say nothing?

It all causes one to think. We would like to think we live in a moral society, and we would like to think that most people have the best interests of our daughters (and sons) in mind, but its seems as though the immoral, the predators, are more driven and emboldened by their perversity and degeneracy than those claiming to be good and decent are driven and emboldened by the mandate and urgency of right.

And in the meantime, while we are wandering in circles and pointing fingers and calling people names, once our children cross the threshold of our homes, after they are outside our purview, who is looking out for them? Who has their best interests in mind?

Are You the Person You Imagine Yourself to Be?: An Ocassion for Self-Examination

“What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

"The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." –Baron Thomas Babington McCauley

It seems that not a week goes go by without reading or hearing about some athlete or celebrity’s colossal blunder or momentary lapse of judgment. And if you are like me, such instances are met with a dismissing shake of the head and self-aggrandizing moralizing about what I would do if the roles were reversed, if I were the one with that much money, that much privilege, that much access.

However, this weekend I had the privilege of having good conversation with good friends who possess a certain measure of good sense and intellect about this very same subject, athletes and celebrities and the horrific personal decisions they make.

However, the conversation did not turn out as I thought it would. I went it with a certain body of assumptions that undergirded my understanding of the whole matter in general and my relationship to the whole issue in particular. But this is what good conversation with good friends causes you to do—think. And if you do not have friends who challenge you intellectually, then begin searching for some.

But I digress. After the conversation, I had to step back and ask myself a few questions. If I had a camera following me 24/7 what would people find out about me? What would I find out about myself?

Shakespeare once put into the mouth of one of his character’s, “This above all: to thine ownself be true.” But how true are we really to ourselves? How well do we really even know ourselves? Often that self we see is that self we see in the mirror of the eyes of others which is essentially the self we consciously project, the self we would like them to see.

But when we are alone with ourselves, what self do we then see? Are we pleased with this self?
And the role money, or the lack thereof, plays in curbing our most base instincts suddenly occurs to me. A broke person moralizes with ease. It is easy to say what you will do or what you will not do when your financial situation limits your access to the world, but if suddenly you found yourself with the financial resources to do anything you wanted to do, if suddenly you found yourself with unfettered access to the world and all the things in it, would your moral code then change? Would that change the person you are and what you believe?

I’m sorry to hit you with something so heavy on a Monday morning, but I have the occasion of examining my own values, of defining myself and my values and attempting to erect some moral boundaries and just wondered if you ever ask yourselves the same questions as well.

And as always, love yourself and be a blessing to somebody.

Any answer to the question of African American progress is necessarily economic in nature

It had to have been the early seventies. I accompanied my uncle to a used car lot to look around, and found myself entranced by this red, shiny Cadillac parked in front of the car lot’s office while a mechanic poked around under the hood.

Soon, a gentleman I took to be the owner walked up and asked the mechanic poking around under the hood what he thought. The mechanic told him that the engine would soon be going and would need to be replaced.

The owner stepped by for a second, took his hat off and scratched his, and finally arrived at a decision. He told the mechanic that he was not prepared to put that much into the car. Additionally, he told him to just shine it up really well and put some new tires and hubcaps on it. He smirked as he finished the last sentence of his command: “Some nigger will buy it.”

And sure enough, I went into town with my grandmother and my aunt and there in front of the Madison County courthouse was that same red, shiny Cadillac with the hood up, except this time a young black man was the one poking around under the hood as a black woman and three children waited in the car. Out of sheer curiosity, I went over to get a good look at the tires as my grandmother and aunt spoke to someone they knew.

Despite evidence to the contrary, little by little, more African Americans are entering the middle class. Perhaps, that pace has slowed to a trickle; it is certainly not at the same rate as in the early seventies. But as we become more prosperous, are we being any smarter with our money?

The ongoing recession has exposed a weakness in the African American middle class. Many of my friends, many people I know, have managed to acquire all the accoutrements of wealth, the outward evidence of wealth, without building wealth. And as the recession has ravaged the nation, it has devastated the African American middle class. As the old saying goes, when America catches a cold, African American develops pneumonia.

And as we continue our climb onward and upward, the answer to any question of how we are to overcome the many obstacles in our path is essentially economical.

Keep in mind that economics brought us here in the first place; greed predates racism. The falsehoods and pseudo sciences supporting the hierarchy of being and the notion of race were all products meant to convince the church and the public of the inhumanity of Africans and other colored people so that they might receive their blessing, or at the very least their apathy, in their dehumanization of colored people the world over.

And it was not a certain change of heart, a great moral awakening, that forced the release, the manumission, of those held in bondage. The decision to even consider freeing the enslaved came about because slavery went against the ideology of the Republican Party. In 1860, the Republican Illinois gubernatorial candidate declared, “The great idea and basis of the Republican party, as I understand it is free labor…To make labor honorable is the object and aim of the Republican party.”

In other words, the presence of slavery debased the notion of labor and laborers, and even more importantly, Northern industrialists were nervous that should the South follow their model of industrialization, they could not compete with the slave labor.

Also, keep in mind that economic considerations were largely behind the gains won by the Civil Rights Movement. Every act undertaken, every strategy and tactic deployed in the Civil Rights Movement had been undertaken and deployed in the previous decade. However, two develops facilitated its success: the ability to send images long distances at rapid speeds and America’s aspirations as a world economic power.

It proved a hard sale to convince foreign nations, especially foreign nations run by brown and yellow people, of the unlimited opportunity available in America when the salesman were preceded by images of Negroes being sprayed with fire hoses and bitten by police dogs in the street. So, something had to give.

With the release of African Americans into the mainstream and into the middle class, you see a proliferation of images of African Americans on the television and the big screen. You see a proliferation of African Americans in public life. But these proliferations of images were designed to take advantage of the new prosperity this so called equality allowed.

And one last closely related analogy. I keep hearing and reading that the increase in the number of portrayals and representations of gays and lesbians in the media is evidence that Americans have become more acceptable of the gay and lesbian lifestyle. But I don’t believe this to be so. The rejection of marriage equality in various states stands as evidence.

But the reason we see the number of portrayals and representations of gays and lesbians in the various media, and the reason gays and lesbians seem to be acquiring more and more power is because sometime in the early nineties research and marketing professionals realized that gays and lesbians perhaps had more disposal income than any other group in America.

And with that revelation came the realization that to gain access to that disposable income, the various media would have to find or make opportunities for these portrayals and representations for advertisers to wrap their product around.

Although we are loath to admit it, wealth and power are necessarily commensurable in this nation. And for you to gain access to the latter, you must have the former. So it goes without saying, if African Americans are to move forward, if African Americans are to gain real power and influence, we must work to build economic muscle. We must work to build real wealth and not just to attain the outward evidence of wealth. And we must eschew the bright, red, and shiny even with new tires and hubcaps.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Every semester for the last few years, I have begun the semester by assigning each of my freshman composition classes an essay from the writing prompt, “Where I Am Going? Where I Have Been: Where I see myself in five years.” The idea for the assignment comes from that old African proverb, “Journey, journey, this is my journey. Where are we going? Where have we been?”.

The purpose of the assignment is three fold. First of all, I simply need a writing sample from the students so that I know what I am facing. Second, I use the assignment as a means of getting to know my students. And last, but most importantly, I use the assignment as an opportunity for my students to take a moment of introspection and chart the journey that lies ahead.

Over the course of the next two or three weeks, we spend time in class and out of class revisiting and revising the essays until the finished product is a carefully and meticulously honed piece of academic writing, and they have thoroughly qualified and researched their chosen path in life.

With few exceptions, my students really enjoy this assignment. Many have later told me how the assignment allowed them to really think through the choices they had made. Others have told me that they felt empowered by the whole exercise, that they felt as if they were truly taking charge of their lives for the first time.

A few years back I even ran into an old student in Miami who was at that time a part of the Burdine’s Department Store management team. She excitedly ran back to her office to find her old “five year plan” that she kept there. And much to my surprise, she had continued to revisit and revise the plan as she met new challenges and as the situation dictated.

And I usually keep copies of the finished essays on hand should I ever get the same students again in a higher level composition or literature class. When this occurs, I often pull out their old “five year plans” just to see how much has changed since they wrote the original essay.

However, just yesterday evening I was going through my things and purging many of these old essays when I realized that for the whole of the time that I have been giving this assignment, I had failed to sit down and compose a five year plan of my own. And I have always been one who believes that to proceed without a plan is like tightrope walking without a net.

But much as I am loathe to admit, I really don’t have a plan perhaps beyond the next few months, and that is unlike me.

Oh, I have very general plans. In five years I know that my children will be off to college, and my wife and I will be finally have the house to our selves. I have a general goal of being completely debt free so that I might be able to save more and retire earlier. I know that I would like to be able to travel to some of those destinations I have dreamed about so long. But that’s it.

And suddenly realizing that I am without a plan, a real plan, frightens me, makes me feel unprepared and vulnerable. And perhaps, at the risk of revealing my sometimes anal retentive personality, I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon formulating a detailed plan of the next five years of my life.

Why don’t you take the time to join me?

Enslaved by Language: A Brief Archaeology of the Word Nigger

I have watched the arguments surrounding the usage of the word “nigger” from a distance and said nothing. But now I have been shaken from my place of passivity.

This weekend I accompanied my children to the theater for a movie, and I heard the word bandied about by the throngs of African American teens with such fervor that I had to pause for a brief second to collect myself. And then on yesterday, I visited an inner city middle school to watch President Obama’s address with a friend’s class, and as I walked down the hallway, I heard the vulgar staccato of the word in almost every conversation I overheard—nigga’ this, nigga’ that, that nigga’, those niggas.

But the final straw came on last evening. As I waited for my last class to begin, two of my young African American male college students sat in a corner having a loud, animated conversation and making liberal use of the word. It became such that I finally pulled them aside and gave them a choice. Discontinue using the word in my presence or leave. They chose the latter.

I don’t know who will read this. I don’t know what good it will do if any. But I have to say it if only to assuage my conscious.

Soon after Europeans began exploring the New World and discovering the vast amounts of potential wealth to be had there, they realized they would have to have an extraordinary workforce if they were to exploit that potential for wealth with any efficiency. Of course, the enslavement of the many indigenous people Europeans encountered as they branched out throughout the world came to mind, but the Church forbade the enslavement of other human beings, and they were forced to step back and regroup.

So, over time, those holding power colluded with those creating knowledge in an effort to prove that these darker peoples were indeed not human, and would benefit from enslavement. Enslavement was sold as a means of bringing civilization and religion to uncivilized pagan peoples.

As an aside, believe in the objectivity of science and knowledge only to your detriment.

But anyway, doing this period, the various pseudo sciences aimed at dehumanizing these darker people proliferated and were promulgated throughout the scientific community. Volumes and volumes of studies all testifying to their subhuman existence were written and circulated.

And keep in mind, before this period, race was not a function of skin color or ethnicity in most of Europe. Race was expressed as a matter of birth and only two categories existed, nobility and commoner; either you were born of blue blood or you were simply a peasant, a common man. The category of race was created simply to organize human beings into a hierarchy of being for the purposes of debasement, dehumanization, and ultimately enslavement.

And before long, the Church acquiesced, and the slave trade began in earnest.

So, long before literal chains were placed about our wrists, about our ankles, about our persons, we were enslaved figuratively through language which bore false witness against our humanity, which sought to place us into a category of living beings right above animals. And the word nigger was an integral centerpiece of the lexicon of the language of enslavement.

I have heard the arguments claiming a “re-appropriation” of the word. I have heard the arguments claiming that the repeated use of the word strips the word of its original meaning. I have heard the arguments claiming that using “nigga’” instead of nigger is a term of endearment, a sign of solidarity. But all these arguments ring hollow.

Some things cannot, and should not, be reclaimed and recycled for extended use. Some things cannot be rehabilitated. And whether you are directing the word nigger towards me in the pejorative sense, or nigga’ in a sense of brotherhood and shared struggle, the history of the word cannot be elided; between the mere two syllables of the word is written the language and a history of centuries of debasement, dehumanization, discrimination and destruction. And the continued use of the word only recapitulates the very terms of our original enslavement.

Young brothers and sisters, stop for a second to think.

Recommended reading:

Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Writings, 1972-1977.

Frederick Douglas, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.