I was trying to comprehend exactly why the death of poet Amiri Baraka affected me so deeply. I cried when I heard. I haven’t read his work in years, I didn’t always agree with his politics and polemics, but still…I feel I lost something yesterday afternoon.
Amiri Baraka spoke at Florida State when I attended, I think back in 2006 or 2007. I don’t remember what he lectured on, only that he was an electric little old man with a Kangol hat and rumpled clothing. Amiri spoke razors into the air and slit us open. His voice carried the boom and current of the 60s, as if the Revolution had camped out in his throat because the rest of us Negroes were sleeping.
Uh oh! Hi! If you’re looking for my old blog, Reckless Acts of Punctuation, it has moved, as of January 1, 2014. I am now writing reckless acts of punctuation at my new blog, TrulyTafakari.com. Join me over there for more discussion of the crazy collisions with life, race, and culture from an over-thinking nerd’s perspective.
Bean and Kingston look toward the bright light of 2014… a girl and her dog
It’s the end of my first calendar year blogging, and that means of end-of-the-year lists. Yay! Apparently, this is a grand tradition throughout the blogosphere, and I’m never one to flout trad–wait, who am I kidding? I’m always questioning tradition or finding some way to do it differently. So, my spin on the usual recap of great things in the past year is to add the bad things that balanced me out.
My mother used to categorize the flavor of a year by one or two mishaps, exclaiming, “This was a horrible year!” In the middle of trying to convince her not to flush the entire 12 month-span down the toilet on the basis of one turd, it still taught me to remember the failures to keep me honest, laughing, and growing.
Without further ado, here are the ways I both (almost) ruined 2013 and the ways I rocked 2013–because, indubitably, this year has been my best in a long while.
5 Ways I Almost Ruined 2013
1. I lost my iPhone 5s. Now, I’m not the Apple head in my family, my husband is, but I had to include the series of the phone to let you know that it’s my brand new Christmas present. (And because my husband always calls iPhones by their government names). I went to a nail salon last week and left it there. The absolute terror I felt driving back, praying my gift from my husband didn’t grow legs, was unparalleled. Luckily, the management had both found it and kept it safe from sticky fingers.
2. I ran into the house with my car. I’ve done this before and it’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise. Last year, I misjudged the distance between my side mirror and the garage opening and obliterated my mirror. My husband was able to order me a new mirror and install it himself, saving us the $300 quoted by the dealership. So, to nick the new mirror this year after last year’s accident totally sucked. But it didn’t break. So ha!
Believe me, I would’ve been so hurt if losing $600 overshadowed the glory of eating all that good food.
3. I almost lost $600 and a parking card in New Orleans. On the last day of my fantastic trip to New Orleans last June, I thought I lost the swipe card to our parking garage. Replacing it would’ve cost me $75. I found it at the very last minute, on the verge of tears. But later that same day, I couldn’t find my wallet, which had $600 in cash given by my road trip roomies to pay for hotel and expenses. I did cry then, at the thought of inadvertently blessing some Louisiana local. Turns out it was in my backseat the entire trip. OMG.
4. I failed to communicate and hurt someone I love. I still need to rectify this, so I’ll keep the details mum. But suffice it to say that if you know two people who don’t get along, it would behoove you to notify them both when they’ll be in the same room. I didn’t, and I suck for that.
5. I became a social media junkie. Next year, one of my commitments is to spend more face time with my family. Real face time, not the Apple version. I spent far too many hours, as certain members of my family gently told me, with my face in the glare of a screen. My little Bean is growing up faster than I can tweet and I don’t want to miss a moment. I need to read more books and less blogs to better hone my skills as a writer. And I also need to spend more time praying and meditating, so that I lose less valuable things while chasing ephemeral ones.
5 Ways I Rocked 2013
Everyone should experience this brand of happy at least once a year.
1.I overcame fear of failure! I submitted (and ran) articles on Feminist Wire, The Closet Feminist, xoJane, Very Smart Brothas, Home Birth International, Improving Birth, The Body Chronicles, Up 4 Discussion, For Harriet, and, by proxy, Clutch and The Root. I really look forward to submitting more across the web in 2014. (P.S. All these articles are listed under my Written Work page.) In stage-related matters, I took 3rd place in a poetry slam that terrified me to enter, and I also served on staff at a larger poetry slam.
2. I took a writing class and worked on my memoir. I rarely like to say it, because it’s been such a long work in progress, but I’ve been writing a manuscript-length project forever. I’m currently at 40,000 words…and stalling. But before I took that class in August, I was at 20,000 words. I’ve been more productive this year than in the past 5 years, and that, to me, rocks. I hope to finish the project next year.
3. I joined a women’s group at my church. This may seem trivial, but it’s huge to me because I don’t join groups often, and I also feel very uncomfortable around women who are older than me. But this group of women has encouraged me, offering needed support when my grandmother died. They presented me with opportunities to stretch myself and grow as a Christian. I got my feet wet volunteering. I greeted people at the front door (an introvert no-no) and found that I rather liked smiling at strangers. Who knew?! I still could not bring myself to buy a church hat, though; pray for me.
It doesn’t get much happier than this.
4. My husband and I paid off all our non-mortgage debt. This year, for the first time in our marriage, we rode out almost the entire year with no consumer debt. I hate credit cards and loans with a vengeance, and we vowed that anything we bought would be cash-only. We’ve been able to save consistently. This is good, because we’re about to drop an unholy amount of money on fixing his old Honda. Whomp. But I’m so grateful that we can do it and not go into debt.
5. I started this blog and discovered Internet community. I don’t know what I expected when I wrote my first little post back in May. But God did way more with my small baby step than I could have imagined. This blog (and its soon-to-come successor) are the creative spots in my life, where I get to write out the thoughts that crowd in my head. And the best part is that you all seem to get me. Some of you I found via your own blogs, or my hangout spot at VSB, or your social media pages. It’s not a small thing to me that you read my piddly rants and comment as if I’m saying something worthwhile. I hope you’ll come over with me to TrulyTafakari.com as I keep writing about my oddball life, race, and culture there.
Have a wonderful and safe New Year’s, good people. See you on the other side of the calendar!
What are your best and worsts of 2013? Was this a good year for you?
Since tomorrow is Christmas and I’ll likely be awash in torn wrapping paper and toddler giggles…
Merry Christmas Eve!
TrulyTafakari.com is a blog from the mind of a recovering over-thinker that discusses life, race, popular culture, and the occasional nerd activity–with an offbeat dose of humor and clarity. TrulyTafakari.com is one part storytelling and two parts telling it like it is. The site is scheduled to launch on January 1, 2014.
If you like what I’ve been writing here under Reckless Acts of Punctuation, then you will enjoy the new blog, which is changed in name only and given shiny new digs. I will explain the meaning behind the title next week, so stay tuned!
If you’re new to my writing, here’s a list of my most popular posts (in no particular order) to get you acquainted with me:
Pass this link on to people you know who love to talk about anything from the superiority of Star Trek to Star Wars, to the reasons why sagging is a reclamation of agency for young black men, to the ways Resident Evil taught me to be a better parent.
Again, Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I’ll see you after the holiday!
Last Friday, Justine Sacco killed her career as a public relations officer with just 75 characters. But 75 seconds’ worth of reflection could have saved it. Okay, I’m lying. The amount of wrongness in the tweet shown above could not be rectified by a minute’s pause; she truly needed the benefit of all her 30 years for that miracle.
Sacco was the Director of PR for IAC, a media giant that manages brands like Vimeo, OkCupid, and Urban Spoon. That tweet, sent early morning on Friday before her flight to South Africa, sparked a firestorm of retweets and made the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet go viral. It seemed the entire world was waiting for this chick to land. By Saturday morning, both Sacco’s Twitter account and her job were defunct.
It didn’t take long for the obligatory (faux?) apology from Sacco to surface (published by the South African newspaper The Star). Of course, it was nothing like the mea culpa I’d prefer to hear from people who publicly display their bigotry. It was worse than I expected, and the apology drew more ire from me than Sacco’s original offending message.
Words cannot express how sorry I am, and how necessary it is for me to apologize to the people of South Africa, who I have offended due to a needless and careless tweet.There is an AIDS crisis taking place in this country, that we read about in America, but do not live with or face on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, it is terribly easy to be cavalier about an epidemic that one has never witnessed firsthand.
For being insensitive to this crisis — which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly — and to the millions of people living with the virus, I am ashamed.
This is my father’s country, and I was born here. I cherish my ties to South Africa and my frequent visits, but I am in anguish knowing that my remarks have caused pain to so many people here; my family, friends and fellow South Africans. I am very sorry for the pain I caused.
So, she’s sorry, and that’s lovely. Forgiveness, truth, reconciliation, all that. But let’s be honest with ourselves. Do we really expect sudden enlightenment over the course of an international plane ride? In some ways, by drumming up outrage to a fever pitch, we leave little time for Sacco to reflect beyond a sincere regret for going viral.
That small Boeing 747 window of time means I should not be surprised that her apology was so awful. Line for line, I want to explain why I believe her supposed apology underscored the privileged, racist sentiment exhibited in her tweet.
For one, I’d like to state the painfully obvious. Her initial offense in her tweet was twofold. Not only does she link the AIDS epidemic to Africa, ignoring modes of infection (“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS.”) but she also identifies her privilege as an affluent, young, white female (“Just kidding. I’m white!”) In short, this is a textbook example of affluenza.
The apology does nothing but repeat the affluenza Sacco sneezed onto Twitter. Bless her heart. She apologizes, “…to the people of South Africa, who I have offended due to a needless and careless tweet.” She jokingly insinuated that the entire continent of Africa is AIDS-ridden, but only finds it necessary to address South Africans? I wonder if she directed her apology to them because it is her land of origin, or because she doesn’t want to have an “accident” during her stay.
Also, I doubt that her tweet was as careless as advertised. Both of her points were barbed enough and girded with sufficient truth (that she is less likely to contract AIDS because of her status) that they wounded.
English: Estimated HIV prevalence among young adults (15-49) by country. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sacco further says, “There is an AIDS crisis taking place in this country [South Africa], that we read about in America, but do not live with or face on a continuous basis.” Sub-Saharan Africans account for nearly 70% of the world’s AIDS cases. There is epidemic there, to be clear. But that line made me see red. NPR reports that as of last year, African-Americans comprised nearly half of the million AIDS patients in the United States. I am 10 more times likely to contract AIDS than Justine Sacco. The state of AIDS cases in the black community meets the CDC definition of an epidemic.
For Sacco to say that Americans do not live with or face the AIDS epidemic, as if it only lives in Africa, de facto reiterates her “joke” that AIDS is a black African disease. It shows how insulated in privilege she is. I would love for her to clarify that “we” means white people; more of us black folk live with and face AIDS than she knows. And she is right: it is easy to joke about a killer when the knife isn’t flush against your throat.
“For being insensitive to this crisis…which terrifies us all uniformly…I am ashamed.” But she is not nearly contrite enough to realize that it doesn’t terrify us all uniformly. Women in South Africa live in danger of being raped because of the myth that virgin sex can cure AIDS. Sacco is likely more terrified of the unemployment line than about possibly contracting the AIDS virus.
“This is my father’s country, and I was born here.” Sacco is in the unique position of having American sensibilities with a South African (white) heritage. And it appears that America has taught her like she teaches many of her fairer-skinned daughters. That Africa is to be mocked and pitied, to be dealt bruises from punchlines heaped upon dark-skinned people, all without the benefit of contextualizing colonization. South Africa is her father’s country, not hers–but she is heiress to its sins. With the backdrop of apartheid inked in the lines of her birth certificate, Justine Sacco is merely living out the racist script her forefathers intended.
In writing this, I am not clamoring for a second, more PR-directed impressively written apology. Sacco demonstrated well enough her regret over hurting South Africans with her language. No, I am more dismayed that she will return to my country, blind as ever. Her tweet and subsequent apology prove that black people the world over are invisible to her and always will be.
dara t. mathis 