politics

Wait … Am I Your “Magic Nig -ga -ger -roe”?!

/ StaceyRose / 2 Comments

Start here:

This, by the way, was and still is some of the most potent realness I’ve seen in a film. Ever.

Now on to the:

Magical Negro: The Magical Negro is typically but not always “in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint,” often a janitor or prisoner.[7] He has no past; he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.[8][9] He usually has some sort of magical power, “rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters.”[8] He is patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and is “closer to the earth.”[4]
-courtesy of Wikipedia

Now the post:

This morning as I  nodded in and out of post third shift consciousness, I perused the good old face space to see what the people in my virtual (and a few in my real) life were up to and I see friends of mine “liking” shit like this:

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and I’m like:

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I pride myself in knowing and embracing a wide variety of people who represent varying racial and ethnic backgrounds, and political ideologies. It is, however, becoming increasingly difficult to understand how it is that people who I work and socialize with can be so unwavering in their “conservative” views,  “conservative” views that have them peeking through the curtains of racism, sexism, and classism’s bedroom window if not sitting in their living room, but still “love” me in the way they say they do. Then it hit me … am I filed away in the minds and hearts of these folk as not being one of those kinds of blacks?! Am I their “Magic Nig -ga -ger -roe” like the Magic Johnson’s, Prince’s, and Oprah’s that have come before me?!

I simply cannot understand how people who show me so much genuine love, concern, and camaraderie can co-sign policies and ideologies that are aimed square at the disenfranchisement of people just like me.  YES, as magical as a nig -ga -ger -roe as I may appear to be, I am or have been the 47% at some point in my life. Let’s check my qualifiers shall we?

Rosie’s top ten “those” people qualifiers

1. Grew up in low-income housing to …

2. A single mother who …

3. While working and during brief periods between children received food stamps.

4. I am a single mother who had a child …

5. Out of wedlock! O_O (no dead husband, no failed marriage [that came after the kid … and he wasn’t the father x_x] , just good old fashion fornication with no intention of extended dedication.)

6. I have immediate family members in jail (that I actually maintain contact with and love very much because contrary to what your “conservative” media outlets would have you believe, people don’t cease being human because are incarcerated! … take all the time you need to process that one.) hell I’ve even …

7. Been arrested! (no jail house tats though, but my street cred is up and that is GOOOD), Oh and I …

8. Don’t like working! (for other people, that is), and I …

9.  Have been on Medicaid as an adult (quite shamelessly, I paid into that shit for 12 years prior, what?! So know that when I was on it, you’re conservative dollar was technically still free willy), but worst of all I …

10.  Voted for Obama to ensure my continued leaching from the great America built by the Founding Fathers off the backs of my ForeFathers!

Again, take a moment, a day if you need to process.  There are more qualifiers, but those may bust your heart wide open and leave you with no hope for savage… I mean American minorities. Think I’m overreacting and “making it racial”? Stop and take a look at the “conservative” base and tell me what you see? I may be going out on a limb, but I think to some point I represent some type of saving grace to my conservative friends (who I actually love and accept despite what their views are). I am, I believe, in their eyes “a credit to my race.” I am well spoken, fairly well read, and goddamn it I make them laugh! What they don’t realize is that it’s not always comfortable for me to be the funny nig -ga -ger -roe. What they don’t realize  is that there are many times that their sweeping indictments of  people who “leach off the system”, or how their tax dollars are paying for this ones healthcare, or the cadence with which they say our president’s name … as if trying to scrape shit off their tongue, often leaves me hating their asses for brief intense periods.

But then I let it go, because my intense hatred will do nothing to elevate the their mind state about the broader reality of minority life, and it’ll run my blood pressure up which we know all black folks suffer with anyhow. So, I just try to live honestly as possible, calling “bullshit” when I see it … when I have the energy to do so,  and serving as an example of the many varieties of  “those people” who exists.  I know I seem angry, well fuck it, I am, but underneath this anger is a pressing need to be understood in the same ways I seek to understand.

If I can manage to separate the political ideology from the living breathing person that I know, then why is it that so damn hard for some to conceive of the fact that I might not be that magical. Maybe, just maybe, blacks and other minorities are not just some mass of bottom feeders that seek to drain an innocent America of all its xenophobic glory. Iono, one day it’ll all make sense I suppose. In the meantime, for those who are ready, consider this an open call to conversation. It’s a call that I will continue to make until I’m no longer able to speak. If we want change we can believe in, we have to believe we can change, and speak that change into existence.

Rosie.

Now go laugh at racism’s sting dammit!

Vote, and shut the fuck up. Please.

/ StaceyRose / 2 Comments

ImageOn the eve of this evening’s final Presidential debate, it has become painfully obvious to me that I’m over it.  All over it.  Social networking battles to the death containing little or no semblance of truth, the ending of friendships over comment strings all serves to do what exactly?  Send you to bed pissed off, or worse, out into the world pissed off looking for a release.  Here’s a little bit of insight that hit me the other day. Voting is a very self-centered thing. Our current democratic system plays on every fear, real or imagined, that we have THEN asks our paranoid, self-obsessed crazy asses to go out and select someone to lead the entire nation.  We go, and we vote our own needs and rarely the needs of others.  If you say that’s not true then you’re lying to someone you should never lie to … you.

I know I’m not going to vote in a way that may necessarily benefit a rich corporation more than it’s going to benefit my poor black artist ass.  Why would I? It’d be self-defeating.  Are there solutions that would be mutually beneficial to all American citizens?  Hell, probably.  But, that’s not what I’m here to write about.  I mainly just want to say that the odds of anyone’s minds being changed by endless online banter and diatribes, t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. are slim to fuckin’ none. So hush.  Go do something more productive, like volunteering and being as selfless as you are with your vote.

Me?  I’m plotting my campaign for 2016. Since world domination is clearly just one rageful tweet away. Governing an entire country can’t be that damn hard.

Rosie.

The A.B.C.’s of the DNC

/ StaceyRose / Leave a comment

I’ll be the very first to admit that I don’t know much of shit about politics.  I’ll go even further and say that most people who cast their votes don’t either.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re all too busy living our lives I suppose.   However, as a writer, I sometimes feel compelled to have a  “voice” or a solid opinion on “key” issues when all I really have is my experience which is the source of most of the material I write.  If it resonates with a group or speaks to  larger “profound” vision.  Cool.  If not, it doesn’t really matter.  It’s still my truth, and I am the only person I can speak for.

Now I find myself in the middle of a political convention as a writer wanting to say something, but not feeling qualified enough.  There are plenty of people up and down the glorious throughway of North Tryon St., on television, on the internet, and on the radio poised to shove their opinion down, through, and in any orifice you have available whether you’d like it or not.  Me, well all I can give you is this whole shindig through my own cultural filter.  With that said …

… this is who I am:  I’m a lower middle class black female, a single mother of one.  I grew up culturally rich but fiscally poor and black in the New Jersey.  These elements are my lens through which I see my life. It is that lens that I will present my muses, random ramblings, and flickers of inspiration for the next few days. It may not be comfortable for all audiences.  I will be non-belligerent, and as honest as my cowardly soul will allow me to be. I vow to keep is simple as Sesame Street when I can.  Come to think of it, that’s what Uptown Charlotte feels like right now … a really warped Sesame Street … only  there are too many guest stars and not enough Muppets to greet them so they just roam endlessly and scream about the things that bother them …  All while Snuffy sits in the infamous “empty chair” and smokes a hooka and giggles. Anyway … Ready kids?  We’re going to the DNC!

Rosie.