EARTH KITT, A GRAMMY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

I watched the Grammys the other day and as usual, I was not impressed. I guess its age, maybe it’s my changing taste in music but regardless of the reasons I really wasn’t moved. There were a few high points when seeing the legends walk across the stage or perform. I mean who can’t get a little excited when you see The Artist; PRINCE with his androgynous, booty crack showing, high heal, pressed, flipped and rag tied back cheveux ass. I LOVE HIM!! Then you get one of his running buddies, THE TIME blaze the stage and all you can see are my Purple Pin-Stripe Jeans and Commander Salamander Purple shirt with the Members Only matching jacket and pink tie. OH MY GOD I was so Purple Rain. It was also the lowest level in my fashion sense, until I was saved by my girlfriend. She was a Rhythm Nation follower and if I wanted some, I had to get on board for my Passport to save the World in my Black on Black on Black wearing a Black Cap.

The Grammys were all about giving recognition to those that had come before. I like shows like that because you get to see Entertainers that entertained. None of the flash, special effects, the magazines and gossip, it was either you had the talent or you didn’t. I recall reading an article about how the current pool of entertainers today are passing out and checking into hospitals due to exhaustion after doing a few concerts. Comparing that to the artist of the past that would sing, dance, write music along the way, do interviews, etc and would not rest until their 20 to 50 city tour was over. Granted many experimented with drugs along the way, but many did not and continue to perform today. I look at Tina Turner performing with (Floor Crawling, Stair Falling, Wig Wearing, Country Girl Talking) Bouncey and I said to myself, “This woman is holding her own with this young girl and she is as old as my grandmother.” The fact that Tina Turner and many of the legends on the Grammys are still at the top of they "GAME" and the kids today are complaining about colds and stress and headache, I just shake my head. Tina showed the type of energy and professionalism from a woman that toured the Entire Country and then some and gave you SHAME to all the children. Proud Mary never looked so good when you see that the young ones need to go back and do some serious study, the same type of study Barry Gordy made every signed artist at MOTOWN do. I would ever make the Rappers today study under the Old Skool talents so that they would understand the real power of the CRAFT and stop calling it THE GAME.

So let me get to why I am writing this new Blog entry (since my past Blog commenters made mention I make them read too much), during the Grammys, I saw many legends from The Beatles to Aretha Franklin (P.S. Can someone do an intervention for her because she looks like she needs a few dozen enemas, some suction and Jenny) but I never see mentioned in Music, Film, Theater or Dancing circles another woman that has not only paved the way for many Black Entertainers but has posted and sacrificed her citizenship during the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s. This woman is Eartha Kitt. Her longevity in entertainment extends five decades and she is still going strong. Around this time of the year (BLACK HISTORY MONTH) its seen that we always go the same icons like Lena Horne, Besse Smith, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Dion Warwick, Nancy Wilson just to name a few. I often throw in names like Pearl Bailey and Earth Kitt when talking about the grand divas of the past and I either get, “WHO?” or “OH YEAH I FORGOT ABOUT HER” which is so sad because Pearl and Eartha has contributed to the Black struggle for acceptance and or American Change than all the other women mentioned.

Earth Kitt, if you really look at her life closely, started out as a tragic figure coming from a hard Southern upbringing and had consistently over come barriers to become an INTERNATIONAL STAR. I had the opportunity to see one of her shows and I was blown away. I remember in that concert she ended her show singing acappella, a song in a foreign language, which after a few minutes we (it was a double date) found out was German. Then Eartha switched languages in the middle of the song to Japanese, then to Swahili, then to Portuguese then to Spanish, then French and then to ENGLISH. Once the English hit, so did the music and the song became recognizable. The song was, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER. I was blown away. Come to find out later, Eartha Kitt speaks 15 Languages Fluently. During the concert at THE CAFÉ CARLYLE in New York (a place she performs regularly for years) she came to my table while singing and extended a champagne glass, without missing a beat we poured Eartha a glass of the bubbly while she sang a tune about loving CHAMPAGNE. When we told her that one of our sitting party was having a birthday, she came back over and did a Sex Kitten version of Happy Birthday in French with a leg thrown over his shoulder in fishnets and high heals. The rest of the evening we kept calling him MARCUS. For those who have not seen Eddie Murphy’s BOOMERANG, it’s an inside joke.

Looking at Eartha’s life, she was abandoned by her family for being a Bi-racial child of the South, struggled as a dancer in Harlem, worked her way into the limelight to become a dancer and then a recording artist, actress of stage, then film and television. Eartha won awards and had become the standard for CATWOMAN that not ever Oscar Winner ( HA HA HA) Halle Berry couldn’t match.

Eartha was Black Listed in 1968 in the United States for speaking out against the treatment of Blacks during the Civil Rights era and Vietnam at Lady Bird Johnson’s First Lady’s Brunch at the White House. Eartha made known that as WOMEN and as a BLACK WOMAN she could not just sit and eat like the Rich and the Wealthy and pretend that the NATION wasn’t on fire with racism and war and as a First Lady it should be on her conscious to not pretend either. After that moment, Eartha had to live in Europe just to make a living.

I won’t go on and on with Eartha Kitt but I will say, look up her biography, she truly is a SOUL we need to remember and include in that list of BLACK PIONEERS and ENTERTAINERS. As far as I am concerned, she should have been on the stage at the Grammys as well. SHYT!!! They had Little Richard, Wooooooooooo !!

Musical interlude in a film with Sydney Poitier and Eartha Kitt

One of the best Video Biographies on Eartha Kitt.

STOP WITH THE DNA CARDING

I grew up in a predominately Black community. I say predominately Black because there were pockets in my community where Latinos lived and a few Whites. We never had any real problems because once you peel back the language and the assumed differences in “culture”, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Spanish speaking groups were just as Black as the lot of us. The running joke in Black Circles was, “You ain’t nothing but a Nigga that speak Spanish”, which was usually said at the height of extreme emotion due to someone's posturing of assumed SUPERIORITY over the other in the Ghetto. And yet, when the chips were down and lines where crossed when Downtown began opposing their rule and or reign upon the Black and Brown people Uptown, SHADE OF SKIN became the unifying force behind the community’s survival. This is how and why Harlem has survived this long as a deeply rooted Ethnic Community. Even with the new ethnic groups moving in such as Africans, Caribbean, Eastern Europeans, Asians and Mexicans who are the new cheap labor force imported to do the dirty work for DOWNTOWN, it normally takes a big issue that is directed specifically at People of Color for all of Uptown to band together, champion Perestroika, and put aside their cultural differences. Although not as often as I would like but it does happen.

Since growing up with parents that taught that one should take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way, I have made that my ticket to success and taken every opportunity to travel and attend schools outside of where I live. Private School, Boarding School, Magnet Schools and Charter Schools, I have had a mix of different types of educational systems up in me and yet my best educational experiences came from PUBLIC SCHOOL. There, you never knew what to expect and yet the differences prepared me more for the differences in people than all other schools, which emphasized more on how different and SPECIAL they were from those other people and their INFERIOR education. Don’t get me wrong, I am not KNOCKING non-Public Schools, I’m just saying that NOT ALL OF THEM ARE AS STACKED AS YOU’D THINK THEY ARE.

So where am I going with this? Well in my youth I occasionally would run into the MULTICULTURALIST. Those people who would introduce themselves by what BLOOD they had flowing through their veins. You know the type, “ Hi, my name is John Doe and my father is part German, Brazilian and half Choctaw Indian and my mother is Cajun with French and Dutch on her father’s side.” Then I would reply, “OK, you can call me Sha, I live in Harlem and can you please excuse me while I stand on THAT side of the room with the single stranded DNA people.”

I know you have come across half a dozen of them in your passing at one time or another. Some think that this is a perfect way of breaking the ice, for starting conversation about one’s rich and varied DNA trail. Quietness is kept, its NOT. Often I have to step back and determine how I need to acknowledge this in public. I can tell you this, when I encounter this, I need to determine if the person is telling me this because their MIXTURE is suppose to be their PEDIGREE; noting the pureness or impurity of it? Is it part of a person’s insecurity that they need to be classified so greatly that one needs to throw everything out there like a fisherman’s net in hopes that someone will snag on and reel them in? Is it a fear of having that 1% Black Blood, which makes you BLACK in America? Could it be the person, quite possibly, is the FLAVA of the week, that fashion statement of BEAUTY for the moment? Is saying to me, a big BLACK, DARK CHOCOLATE, EXTREMELY ETHNIC LOOKING MAN, that since you aren't multi-DNA’ed, I am the lowest of evolutionary tree. How should I respond socially after an introduction like that? Am I better, worst or should I put on my serving jacket and start passing out drinks, hors d’oeuvres and caviar because my singular bloodline makes me obsolete and problematic to the eye and the rest of the World?

Not being insensitive but I do understand the dilemma of bi-racial people. The psychological effects and the social stigmas of being “between the races” are well notes as tearing people apart. In my youth, looking at race, I never really understood the big deal with being bi-racial, it was pretty much common place in my neighborhood to see light and dark skinned people. As a child I will admit, I was cruel to a few dozen kids, (mainly because I JUST DIDN'T LIKE THEM) but I recall the name calling toward bi-racial kids. The harshest of the name-callings came from those Non-Public Schools I told you about. Those schools where WE were special and better than the Public educated low lives in Public School. Private Schools were masters at being divisive. I had a best friend who the girls just loved and the boys hated. He had that curly light brown sandy colored hair, green eyes, pretty white teeth, blah blah blah (yeah fellahs, back in the day Light Skin Brothas Were In) and he was my best friend. Yet all the while he and I were partners in crime, he was hampered with the nickname, “White-boy”. To add, it was best to call him this behind his back because to his face, some of the worst fights in school history occurred.. or at least the history of my time. What made our time together so contradictory was that my nickname was BLACK JESUS. As a child, it was the name of DEATH. Today to be called Black Jesus, you are expected to COME CORRECT yet White-Boy can either ostracized you, get you a date on I LOVE NEW YORK or become President of the United States of America.

The calling card for ethnicity might be important if a person sees it as a means to elevate themselves in a racially conscious America but when you address this to Black Americans, it can be an edgy thing that often will backfire in your face. Black folk are VERY sensitive about RACE. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. To not accept it is a serious SELF DENIAL that ranks up there as melanin not existing at all. For Whites that “Do Not See Color” that myth isn’t true either because People of Color and the WORLD sees the tan lines. The issue isn’t seeing or not seeing COLOR; it has more to do with acknowledging and respecting the differences in people, which also includes gender, and other physical attributes that come with RACE and Ethnic diversity.

There is this under lining drag on the fabric of American society and in parts of the world where to be non-Black means better. To be associated with anything Black, African, Caribbean, Black/Latino permeates the texture of an American Better-Than psychology. The average (White) American will say this is not so. The Average Latino in public will say this is not so but remember, I live in an area where Black and Brown people live side by side, so sharing of personal stories is common. The role of skin color plays largely within the Latin communities as well. Like the "Color Consciousness" of Black Americans, the same insidious human transparency exist from the South of the Boarder to the tip of Brazil where African and Native Americans were enslaved and intermingled with European dominance and servitude. But it just don’t stop there, the FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET scares the people in India as well. Just recently I watched a BBC Special where the people of India purchase millions of dollars in skin lighteners in order to PASS. Passing as a term coined by Black Americans for being LIGHT SKINNED enough to either PASS as WHITE or light enough to not UNSETTLE Whites in society. Here is one of those Skin Lightener commercials that run in India.

After the media induced, race and gender based South Carolina caucus, it was said that Bill Clinton insinuated that Barak Obama’s win was “insignificant” because Jesse Jackson had won in the same state as well. A fervor of racial/anti-racial charges ensued most of which was not true. Charges that Bill/Hillary were playing the RACE CARD and the Clintons were using facts to distort the significance of the Historical moment plus the media broadcasted that Bill Clinton was trying to make Barak Obama MORE BLACK in the eyes of the nation, it was too much for even America to take. A fact that I found hard to consider close to anything factual from the start. Why would Obama even care if America had considered him and MORE or LESS BLACK. Especially is his published book, The Audacity of Hope, he had addressed his thoughts on his own bi-racial makeup and the affection he shared for both his African (Kenyan) Father and American (White) Mother's background.

I immediately came to the defense of both Obama and the Clintons arguing that this whole matter was MUCH ABOUT NOTHING and that AMERICANS are not that stupid to fall for it. Then I was hit with another curve ball two days later, OBAMA GOES TO KANSAS. His intentions, to gather support for his run for President but most of all, to revisit is ROOTS. The roots of his mother. His White Roots.

Huuuuuuummmmmm? I said while scratching my head. COULD THIS REALLY BE POSSIBLE?. I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt, and yet THE MEDIA covered the wayward child of Kansasian Roots as this precious piece of Americana. If the hands of gentleness for the MOMMA OBAMA story was ROCKWELLIAN, it was as fresh as Tara with the Gone With The Wind theme playing in the background. By reports end I wanted to see Obama in silhouette standing high before corn layered fields with a soft wind and a setting SUN shouting to the WORLD, “And I shall never be BLACK no more!”

Now I know Obama does not feel this way BUT after what had occurred in South Carolina and the issues of RACE, you have to question the immediate Public Relations design Too Black/Black Like Jesse Jackson taint before leaving. And if there was any hint Obama had any Black Blood, it was clearly WHITE WASHED away in the story reported about his HOMECOMING TO KANSAS. As a Black person, that has his own perception, I saw this as the ultimate assimilation of a Native Black Son. Even the reporters had asked Obama, "As a youth do you think you would have been able to eat chilli at the soup counter?" Barak Obama never answered the question directly because he know the answer would have simply been "No", but who wants to be reminded of that. That would smug the perfect picture if you did. Like all things, the BLACK perspective isn’t important until it CAN (often doesn’t) effect America. Obama's visit to Kansas affects America because throughout all the trials that make up a Barak Obama, regardless of the abandonment of his African Father whom was never present in his life, its the notion that Obama’s REAL family starts with his Mother’s side (Oh did I mention his mother’s side is related to Vice President Dick Chaney?) and ends there. This is what was most important in Obama's re-imaging. There were no more Bi-racial indicators after his visit. How Obama’s grandfather felt like an outsider and left his backwards hometown to see the World and how he was open enough to allow his daughter to date a BLACK man is admirable, but it does not touch the hearts and imagination of Black people on a whole but it might jerk a tear from Whites, bi-racial persons and the MULTICULURALIST who struggle for acceptance and physical existence when confronted with difference. By the time Obama left Kansas, the Media had successfully made him more WHITE countering the "RACE" baiting accusations of Bill Clinton's comparing him and his campaign to BLACK JESSE JACKSON.

HEAR ME WHEN I SAY THIS, I do understand that a person is not 100% of any one thing or another, so it shouldn't be the header of your Personal Resume of Life, especial when you first meet a person. You aren’t advertising your Whiteness or your Boriquaism or your Blackness or a combination of the three, trust me, I can see it. All I want to know is your Name and eventually your Character. True you are a make up of your past experiences, your parent’s DNA, the Blood that flows in your veins but all of that is beneath your SKIN. Bad enough we fight over skin color, now I have to deal with blood concentrations as well?

Issues about Race are never about Blood or DNA, its about Rights and Respect. In America I would argue more about acknowledgement or Race than the ignorance of it. Look at it this way, you are a child living in a dysfunctional home (as if there exist a REAL FUNCTIONAL home these days) and for years you had been verbally abused, called names, embarrassed, made to feel like you didn't belong. Years later as an adult, you somehow survive yet your relationship with your own family is strained. Although you still respect your birth parents, your connection is strained at best. The disconnection now begins to effect your personal relationship with your children. The root cause, you have unresolved issues with your family which keeps you personally from moving on and growing. You find out that on your road to recovery, a dialogue and a moment of forgiveness is needed. The only problem is, YOUR FAMILY isn't hearing it. Denied Resolutions is the problem.

When I hear that a person is dropping his or her multi-racial multi-cultural DNA CARD I only hear UNRESOLVED DENIED RESOLUTIONS for who they believe there are. When I walk down the street and a DOG jumps out to bite me, I am not discerning if it is a Pure Breed or a Mutt, I'm Hauling ASS because a Bite is a Bite. Same as all people, the multiculturalist, the bi-racials, the pure-breed Aryans or the Lost Children of Israel on 125th Street in Harlem, New York. Don't give me your DNA Card just tell me your name. I'll decide later to call you crazy or not to care what "blood type" you are.