drylongso's archives
back to archive index
August 23, 2003
Music
‘Hey Mami, You Look So Good’ 
"I, ON THE OTHER HAND, felt protective. When I became a teenager, I asked my father what I should do when my sisters got catcalled. My father’s advice was this: 'As long as they don’t touch them, you laugh or ignore it. It’s part of our culture.' Two decades later, in the age of gentrification, white women have now entered Latin neighborhoods. And when different races begin to live side by side, there’s going to be culture clash, misunderstandings and anger. So is catcalling part of the Latino culture or just a rude invasion of some sort?" MSNBC
August 18, 2003
Political Animal
Alabama Tied in Knots by Tax Vote "Riley's opponents also have targeted black voters, airing a radio ad on stations with mostly black audiences featuring a man with poor diction warning, 'Our property taxes could go up as much as fo' hundred percent,' and blaming 'Montgomery insiders who have been ignorin' us for years.' The ad was paid for by a political action committee whose top contributors are the state's largest bank, a leading insurance company, two timber and paper companies and county farmers federations -- all of which supported Riley last November. The state farmers federation also controls the insurance company, which would lose a large tax break that gives it an advantage over other insurers." Washington Post
August 16, 2003
Political Animal
Homos 101 "'It was like the biggest joke on campus coming true,' says Harris, who was completing his final semester at Morehouse when the beating occurred. 'We would always say we'd take a bat to someone's head if somebody did something like that to me, and everybody would laugh. It was obvious that it was being said in jest, but that there was a lot of disdain for gay people in general under the surface.' Harris was not at all surprised by Guy's mindset: 'People accepted it and didn't say anything about it.'" Village Voice
Political Animal
People Like Us "Maybe it's time to admit the obvious. We don't really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal. Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood. Instead, what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves." The Atlantic Monthly
August 14, 2003
Political Animal
Cirque du Kobe “'I had people telling me it’s only a matter of time before they bring that up and do the whole Mark Fuhrman thing,' 20-year former Sheriff A.J. Johnson says of the suit the county ultimately settled for $800,000 in 1996. Johnson hotly denies his home of nearly 30 years is a racist place, and still maintains that the suit — brought by the ACLU on behalf of black and Latino motorists who constituted nearly all of the stops made by the Sheriff’s Department over a two-year-long attempted crackdown on drug smuggling — was bogus, because the federally funded program used criteria aimed at spotting drug traffickers, not minorities." LA Weekly
August 11, 2003
Political Animal
Bush's Visit Shuts Down Senegal "As dawn broke on the day of the presidential visit, Senegalese police officers in red berets accompanied by American officials went house to house with bomb-sniffing dogs. In each house, the residents were ordered out and led to a soccer field ringed with metal cordons, where they were forcibly held without food for six hours until Bush's safe departure, 'like sheep' said 15-year-old Mamadou to a Reuters correspondent. Reporters described the normally bustling tourist destination as looking like a 'ghost town,' its bright shutters tightly drawn, fishermen's pirogues idle in the bay--patrolling US Secret Service agents with dogs and frogmen swimming through the shallows provided the only signs of life. With the island's inhabitants safely quarantined, President Bush and the First Lady toured the old red-brick slave house. Standing over an air-conditioning vent, the President then delivered a speech to 300 or so carefully selected guests." The Nation
August 10, 2003
Political Animal
Has Stanley Williams Left the Gang? "The boys had arrived right on time, some of them early even. They've gathered to talk to Williams about his book ''Life in Prison,'' an uncomfortably candid account of what it's really like behind bars. As a co-founder of the Crips, which rivals the Bloods as the most notorious, far-flung gang-crime syndicate in the world, Williams has plenty of street cred. He wrote the book in his cell on death row in San Quentin prison, where he has been for more than 22 years, having been convicted of four homicides. He wrote it for these boys, and all the kids across the country like them, to persuade them to turn back before it's too late. Don't be fooled by the gladiator stories you hear about prison, he is saying. This place is hell on earth." Free registration required. New York Times Magazine
August 9, 2003
Music
As Associates Fall, Is 'Suge' Next? "People familiar with the situation say Knight tried to control the rival Bloods factions with money and gifts. But his largess often provoked resentment. He lent luxury cars and apartments to his favorites, only to revoke the perks on a whim. He told associates that if they stuck by him, someday they too would have big houses in the suburbs. When it didn't happen, his hangers-on grew embittered." Free registration required. Los Angeles Times
August 7, 2003
Music
Kentucky Fried Movies "Black America, as imagined by Hollywood, looks something like this: Chris Rock clowns around as a Presidential candidate in Head of State. Steve Martin plays the honky to Queen Latifah's lady hoodlum in Bringing Down the House. Jamie Kennedy's Malibu rapper pretends he admires black culture while acting like a buffoon. Only Eddie Murphy plays matters racially straight as an unemployed father in Daddy Day Care. It's the one positive attribute for a comedy with few laughs." City Beat
August 6, 2003
Political Animal
Our Liberian Legacy "But Lewin's vision was not to be. In 1926, when Liberia was struggling under British debt, the Firestone Tire and Rubber company extended a $5 million loan in exchange for a ninety-nine-year lease on a million acres of land it hoped to use for rubber plantations. Firestone's influence quickly altered the country's trajectory. In a 1973 report, Atlantic correspondent Stanley Meisler wrote that Firestone 'became such a dominant factor in the Liberian economy and so great a source of public services such as roads and schools that cynics enjoyed joking for years that, while most of Africa was colonized by Britain or France, Liberia was colonized by Firestone.' Firestone did not share Lewin's vision of 'enlightened' economic imperialism." The Atlantic Monthly
August 3, 2003
Political Animal
Scare Tactics: Why are Liberian soldiers wearing fright wigs? "According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals. It also makes the soldiers feel more invincible. This belief is founded on a regional superstition which holds that soldiers can "confuse the enemy's bullets" by assuming two identities simultaneously. Though the accoutrements and garb look bizarre to Western eyes, they are, in a sense, variations on the camouflage uniforms and face paint American soldiers use to bolster their sense of invisibility (and, therefore, immunity) during combat. Since flak jackets or infrared goggles aren't available to the destitute Liberian fighters, they opt for evening gowns and frilly blouses." Slate
Political Animal
Double Lives on the Down Low "Masculinity is a surprisingly effective defense, because until recently the only popular representations of black gay men were what William calls 'drag queens or sissies.' Rakeem takes a hit from the bowl. 'We know there are black gay rappers, black gay athletes, but they're all on the DL,' Rakeem says. 'If you're white, you can come out as an openly gay skier or actor or whatever. It might hurt you some, but it's not like if you're black and gay, because then it's like you've let down the whole black community, black women, black history, black pride. You don't hear black people say, "Oh yeah, he's gay, but he's still a real man, and he still takes care of all his responsibilities." What you hear is, "Look at that sissy faggot."'" New York Times Magazine
Poetry
Hello, Machine? Dialing up nowhere,
hoping no one’s home.
Poetry
On His Cyber Affair He looks at her and sees
the pain of yesterday’s existence
Poetry
Gender Issues in Sepia Space Drylongso sought out some of the pioneers of the internet and asked them about their experiences with race and gender on the internet. In a wide ranging email conversation, Art McGee, Kali Tal, Dr. Goddess, Mike Bowen and Drylongso’s Editor, Lisa Jeter engage in a meta discussion of their expectations of their participation on the internet and the realities such as cyberstalking, feminism and expressions of masculinity.
Poetry
Gender Issues Topic 3: Remedies In the first discussion, panelists discussed their expectations, many of which have remained unrealized in the realities of Sepia Space. Are there any solutions? Can the expectations ever become realities? Check out the panelists' thoughts on antidotes to their Sepia Space existential angst.
Our participants were asked to consider the following set of questions and respond.
This discussion centers on remedies. What do you see as the central problems in online male/female relationships? Is there something inherent in electronic transmissions that positively or negatively effect the development of online gender relationships? How can we foster greater tolerance for varied genders? How can we remove some of the socialized structure around gender relationships in a media where many other structures are removed?
August 1, 2003
Poetry
Gender Issues Topic 2: Realities What is the reality of gender issues between black men and women in online communities? In that anyone can either hide or create themselves online in a fashion that could be totally different than their real-world gender, how does this effect what we perceive to be male/female relationships online? How do you tell what is “real” and “unreal”?
Poetry
Gender Issues Topic 1: Expectations How would you define or explain the disjoint of what black men and women expect with regard to interactions on the Internet and what actually transpires? How is this disjoint understood in an historical view? What have you noticed about how black men and women interacted and where the situations exceeded or fell short of yours and their expectations? How did such expectations manifest and how did you address them when they arose?