Madame Noire | Black Women's Lifestyle Guide | Black Hair | Black Love

Unfortunately, there are still some places that will treat you like a second class citizen simply because you’re black. While many of us recognize this fact, we wouldn’t assume that the place where we bring our children into the world, the hospital,  would be so riddled by prejudice and racism.

But believe it. This was the case for writer Denene Millner who gave birth to her first child at a hospital in New York City.

You won’t believe how poorly she was treated on what was supposed to be a happy, memorable occasion. You can read her story at Black Voices.com.

More on Madame Noire!

• Close Call! Actors Who ALMOST Played A Few Surprising Roles…
• Reasons To Love Him, Not His Loot
• Sisters In Hiding: Not So Famous Sisters of Famous Celebs
• Say Cheese! Unfortunate Yet Unforgettable Celebrity Mug Shots
• 8 Signs The Guy You’re Messing With Is NOT a Grown A** Man
• Reader Sound Off! Why the Nicki & Beyoncé Beauty Standard is WAY Off
• Want Kids? See What Mother’s Wish They Knew Before Starting A Family…
• Somebody Come Get This Fool: Bow Wow Reveals Celeb Chicks He Slept With

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the struggles of black women around the world when we’re dealing with so many issues here in the United States, but there are some who actually admire the experience of African American women, particularly black Britons.

An article on the tvcollective.org recently hired a previous CNN program discussing black britons’ struggle to be heard and how they’ve looked to black women in the U.S for inspiration. Making up only 3% of the population in the UK, black women there say they struggle with everything from negative representations in the media, stereotyping, and political discrimination to not being able to find appropriate cosmetics or products for their hair, with ethnic beauty products representing just 1% of all new hair care, skin care and makeup launches.

“Minorities aspire and have bought into the American ideal that if you work hard, you can reach the top. But in Britain, it doesn’t always work that way,” says Heidi Mirza, a professor at the University of London and author of Young, Female and Black.

“The British stereotype of black women is that we are the loud ones and we are overly sexualized or eroticized,” says Zena Tuitt, a 37-year-old British Caribbean. “We don’t want to be seen as that, so in Britain we have a tendency to try to fit in and not stand out. In quite a conservative society, in order to get on, you need to fit in and to keep your head down.”

While that phenomenon sounds all too familiar to us, black women in Britain say they admire the way African American women have taken these issues on.

Simone Bresi-Ando, a black British woman of Ghanaian descent, says African-American history has had a strong impact on black British women in helping them realize their own inner strength to join together and fight for racial and gender equality. In 2009, she created the “I’m Possible” group as a platform to help push black British women’s voices into the public eye and highlight achievements for women of color in Britain—a move she was inspired to take after witnessing two American programs: Oprah’s Legend Luncheon and Black Girls Rock.

“I admire the black experience in the States because of the sense of community and ability to sing together from the same song sheet on important political issues,” Bresi-Ando says. “We lack those networks here, and we don’t know how to connect in a positive way because we don’t want to openly address the issue.”

Kehinde Olarinmoye, who is of Nigerian descent, says she thinks the struggle is similar and different:

“America has experienced racism a lot longer than we have. And (American) women have a platform set for women of color, and that’s what we are trying to create.

“We’ve had to dig deep in order to find our history, and we’ve had to look up to African-Americans to see what models we can replicate here and give a British identity.”

Using the same argument as many black women in the U.S., Desiree Banugo, a member of “I’m Possible,” says black women are also partially responsible for the images that are portrayed and they need to take ownership of them.

 “We have the opportunity to share and educate others about our culture and experience so they can see it for what it really is — rather than from the voices of people who don’t know, or from the media, which distorts what we’re saying, thinking and how we live.

“The important thing in terms of diversity is to engage in the conversation on race. We are a long way off from being in a place where the issues are tackled head on.”

What do you think about the similarities and differences between black women in Britain and in the U.S.? What do you think African American women can learn from their experience?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

More on Madame Noire!

• Things Black Mothers Say
• Celebrity Mistresses: The Good, The Bad, and The Trifling
• 7 Curl Defining Products to Get Your Curls and Coils Poppin’
• How to Attract a Healthy Relationship This Year
• 6 Ways to Tackle Relationship Arguments
• He Loves Me: Men Who Just Adore Their Wives
• Evening Eye Candy: Larenz Tate

Everyone agrees that stereotypes are wrong but there are a few floating around that most black people don’t take much offense to. In fact, some stereotypes are more a badge of honor for black culture than racial bigotry.

Not only are many black people proud to proclaim these commonly held notions, but if a white person affirms her belief in this lore, you’ll pat her on the back for finally getting it right, thinking “now that’s a cool white person.”

And here they are, black people’s favorite stereotypes:

Franchesca Ramsey’s YouTube video, “Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls” might have come along a little late in the history of the “sh*t say” meme but it’s certainly created the most controversy. While all of the videos paint a very stereotypical portrait of the group they’re imitating, Franchesca’s video has been flagged as “reverse racism.” She even went on Anderson Cooper’s new show to speak about the video and defend herself against claims that statements made in the video were racist.

Check out a short clip from the show below

Racist, eh? The word gets thrown around entirely too much, by people of all races, that perhaps we’ve become desensitized to it. For those of you who might need a refresher course racism is, according to Merriam Webster, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” I had to read that a couple of times so to state it more plainly, racism means a person believes that because they are of a particular race they are superior to a person of another race.

A second definition states that one can show prejudice or discrimination to a particular person because of one’s racist beliefs.

Judging by those definitions it’s clear that Franchesca’s video does not fall into either one of those categories. She is not stating that black people or anybody is better than the people who make these statements to black women. What it does do is highlight some of the ignorance believed and expressed by some people…who happen to be white.

Very few things in this world are absolute. When the “Sh*t Black Girls Say” video came out, I didn’t see myself in 99 percent of the jokes he made. (I’m not going to lie, I love to say “It’s hot/cold in here.” or “That’s my song, turn that up.”) But I still found humor in it because I’ve heard plenty of black girls say those same things. And if those crying “reverse racism” were honest with themselves they’d find the same is true about Franchesca’s video.

Not for one minute do I believe that all white people express such ignorance as some of the statements made in her video; but I’ve also seen,  experienced and been privy to conversations about enough of those comments to know that there are white people, whether they mean harm or not, who have used some of those exact phases or asked those same questions. There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant. Our experiences on this earth only explain so much. There is a problem, however, in being confronted with your ignorance and choosing to ignore it while pointing the finger at the one trying to educate you.

In all honesty, I can’t help but feel like white people, who are coming to the racism game a little late, might not truly know what the word, the belief and the corresponding actions might look like.

What do you think, was Franchesca’s video racist? Have you seen or heard people using the “racist” term incorrectly?

More on Madame Noire!

• Michelle Obama’s No Angry Black Woman and Neither Am I
• Sh*t Natural Hair Girls Need to Stop Saying and Doing…
• 9 Things I Wish I Would Have Known Before Jumping the Broom
• 9 Artists Who Should Have Blown Up Big…But Didn’t
• Our Favorite Word?… Girl
• Ask a Very Smart Brotha: Trying Not to Hate Him & Saving It

Recently, the Huffington Post Black Voices section published a provocative piece entitled, “It’s Official: Gay is the New Black.” In it, Writer Monique Ruffin writes about the somewhat tenuous relationship between the gay rights community and the black community, particularly the black church and argues that there are parallels between the fight against racial discrimination and equal rights for the LGBT community under the law. She said, “Gay is the new black, sadly, because many blacks haven’t been willing to embrace their own practices, secrets, fear, and shame about homosexuality. Many blacks have not been able to reconcile their real-life experience with their faith, and until they do this, they are oppressed people who are also practicing the oppression of others.”

While I agree partially with the sentiment of this piece, it does kind of remind me of the scene from The Wiz when Dorothy (played by Diana Ross) and the gang enter the Emerald City to an awaiting spectacle of dancers, who looked like they stepped right out of a 1970s Ebony Magazine’s Fashion Fair spread. The dancers in full regale, boogie around the city to a chorus of “I. Want to Seen. Green. I. Wouldn’t be caught. Dead. Red.” That is until an announcement from the great, powerful and unseen OZ blares over the loud speakers and says, “I thought about it and green is dead and I changed my mind and the color is red.” Then the whole Emerald City suddenly transforms to a dazzling spectacular of red sequin and gardenza as the same dancers two-step around the pavilion, saying, “I wouldn’t be seen green. You got to be dead red…”

In other words, in this presumably “post-racial” era it’s easy for some to assume that racism doesn’t matter as much in comparison to other social issues.  However, despite the rather catchiness of the phrase, gay is not the new black because black is still black.

Of course this isn’t the first time this declaration has been made. As the battle for gay rights issues such as marriage equality have intensified so have the comparisons of the gay rights movement to the Black Civil Rights movement of the 60s. And when Proposition 8 passed in California, gay rights advocates, as well as the mainstream press, were quick to place the blame squarely on the Black community, even as Blacks made up less than 10 percent of total voters. The meme, for whatever reason, caught on, and now the Black community has largely been viewed by the mainstream as homophobic and intolerant.

This is not to suggest that homophobia does not exist in Black community. However I frankly get sick and tired of myself, my friends and my family carrying the weight for something we are not. Perception wise, being gay is no different than being a Republican in the community; some folks may not like it but it damn sure hasn’t stopped Hakeem and his boyfriend, nor Uncle Walt and his “George Bush was a Great Man” political views from coming to the family dinner.

Black folks, like the rest of humanity, are complex beings. This broad brush strokes that we as black folks are more homophobic than the rest of society is a bit deceitful, if not dangerously divisive. Likewise, It’s easy to pick on the black community because it lacks social power and political voice to really fight back than it is to strike out at the real power structures like Congress, State Assemblies and anti-gay, and mostly white, lobbying organizations, and the Church, which are far more influential in deciding who gets married and who doesn’t.

Moreover, I am a little perplexed at how so much attention is given in the press to homophobia in the Black community while ignoring the racial prejudices that have become so normalized in the LGBT and the mainstream community as a whole. While gay advocates and legislatures in New York were likely patting themselves on for their victory in making that state the sixth state to pass a same sex marriage law, there was certainly a deafening silence from many of the same folks about how that state’s biggest city continued its draconian stop-and-frisk practice of rounding up Blacks and Latinos (gay, straight and otherwise) for marijuana arrests.

Veteran actor, James Earl Jones, says he can understand racists because of the sentiments his grandmother expressed when he was growing up.

Although, Jones’ grandmother was Cherokee, Choctaw Indian and African American, he says she was the most bigoted person he knew.

Jones said his grandmother was trying to prepare them for the world they’d encounter, but it was still bigotry.

“She trained us that way. She would consider it defensive racism, but it’s still racism, it’s still the same poison.”

You can read when and how he learned to think for himself and watch a clip of the interview at Black Voices.

Did you grow up in a house where your parents or grandparents expressed bigoted attitudes, trying to prepare you for the world?

America is such a global heavyweight that we forget the nation is only 235 years old, barely an adolescent as far as empires go. More than a third of U.S. history is marked by the legal institution of slavery and we’ve been dealing with the fallout of racial inequality ever since it was abolished. But cultural traditions run deep and propagate down generations. While progress is steady, America’s color lines don’t erase easy.

And few things warp a child’s mind more than the ridiculous notion that people don’t like you or judge you because you’re black. Even as an adult, it’s infuriating, depressing and demeaning all at once. Socially, it causes us to defend and define our existence out of habit. I’m not a “man in America” but rather a “black man in America,” and the difference is anything but subtle.

Today’s racism is often subtle, unlike the strain that infected the nation during the civil rights era. It’s carefully veiled. Daily situations are more shades of grey than simply black or white. Like any form of oppression, the people on the receiving end are left with the impotence to say something. But sometimes, our learned defensiveness jumps the gun and what appears to be classic racism may actually be a case of mistaken identity.

Here are the 7 most common things that get billed racist when the check should be going somewhere else.

Being Confused as a Store Clerk

Ever go shopping in [insert chain store here] and a white person asks you for help? The first thing you think is, “Oh, you think I work here because I’m black?” but not so fast. There are plenty of non-racist reasons someone might think you work there like your outfit. I’ve been caught out there wearing matching colors to the store clerks.

Sometimes people just aren’t being mindful. Say you knock over a few boxes of cereal and start resetting them as someone walks over with a burning question, hardly looking your direction in her thirst to consume. Silly things like that happen all the time. But if you’re wearing a boardroom suit in the supermarket and some white person comes up talking about, “where’s the oatmeal,” that’s some racist s#!@

Byron Thomas has many people confused. The black, 19-year-old University of South Carolina Beaufort student was asked to remove a controversial confederate flag he had displayed in his dorm room, and while he initially obliged university officials’ request, Thomas said he is considering putting the symbol of southern pride back in his bedroom window.

“When I look at this flag, I don’t see racism.”I see respect, Southern pride,” he said in video he posted to CNN’s iReport website which has received nearly 70,000 views. “This flag was seen as a communication symbol.”

Thomas believes the flag’s original meaning has been tarnished over the years and asserts that people of his generation can eliminate the negative power by flying the flag as a symbol of southern pride. Thomas says many people are in support of his goal to relinquish the confederate flag of it’s negative image, including his white roommate.

School officials and Thomas’s own parents see things otherwise, but under first amendment protections, the university cannot ban him from displaying the controversial image.

Check out Thomas’s video and tell us what you think. Are you offended by displays of the confederate flag? Do you agree with Thomas that the controversial history of the flag can be turned into a positive image of southern pride?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

More on Madame Noire!

• Differences That Are Worth Overcoming, And Those Worth Being Stubborn About
• Well You Don’t Say: 10 White Singers We Once Thought Were Black
• Breaking It Down: What Men Think of Things Women Do
• The Questions He Hopes You Never Ask
• Best New Books by African American Authors
• 9 Inconvenient Truths About Men and Cheating
• Hot Business Looks on a Tiny Budget Through Thrifting!
  

Many people say that, by definition, black people can’t be racist. That race is a social construct based on the premise that white people are the superior race in order to maintain power, and therefore since black people don’t have that power, they can’t be racist.

And then there are people like Nate Hill, a black man who has been walking around Harlem in whiteface wearing a sign around his neck that reads: “White People Do Not Smell Like Wet Dog,” as part of his “White Ambassador” project. Three times a week through the month of February, Hill will put on this spectacle to show that black people can be racist too.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hill says, “My mission is pretty clear – racial tolerance. The white stereotypes are often overlooked, and I wanted to examine that. There seems to be a double standard of how racist you’re allowed to be depending on your race.” I.e. I am a biracial man (he says he’s half white in the video below) dying to be accepted by white people.

Hill says he tried to approach the subject from the opposite point of view but he couldn’t get white people to pay attention. Now he’s attempting to use a shock tactic to, as he says, “get it to where I’m defending them, so they’ll be like, ‘aw, yeah, racism, sure.’” Let me help you out Hill, white people don’t pay attention to racism (often) because they don’t have to, and they certainly don’t need any help defending themselves against insignificant remarks such as white people smell like wet dogs.

I find it interesting that Hill goes from saying he’s half white to disassociating himself with the race by his use of the word “them,” but coonery aside, is there a need to speak out against white racism? Personally, I say no, based on the historic definition of the word. When black people speak out against racism, for the most part we’re not complaining because someone said we eat fried chicken all day or we’re welfare queens and thugs, we’re fighting against the unfair practices that result from those attitudes such as discriminatory hiring and firing practices, gentrification, and exploitation of the poor and uneducated. These are issues that won’t get resolved by walking around 125th and Lenox—a predominately black neighborhood might I add—in whiteface.

All of the prejudice attitudes black people hold about white people combined wouldn’t be enough to eliminate the status quo. White people know racism exists, we don’t have to try to make them “see” anything, especially by exposing the fact that black people make racially insensitive remarks about them too. If anything, this gives white people justification to say, “look they do it too,” they don’t need special programs, funding, affirmative action, or any other type of aid simply because they are minorities.

There is certainly a need for racial tolerance across the board, and I’m not belittling the inappropriate comments black people make about white people, but let’s not make them a victim here. A black person serving as a white ambassador has Uncle Tom written all over it, and in the case of Hill, makes us look more caricature-like than most modern day images of the black community. Let us also not forget the outrage we express when a white person puts on blackface—we can’t turn the tables and do the same in the name of racial tolerance.

Of course, we need white people on our side in some respects in our battle against the racist powers that be, but being a white ambassador is really just standing up to a problem that doesn’t really exist. If we want white people to “see” racism more clearly, we have to expose their own hidden prejudices, which truthfully we all carry inside.

Listen to what Nate Hill has to say about his project in the clip below. What do you think about his white ambassador mission? Do we need black people to speak out against white racism?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

I really don’t understand what’s going on with teachers across America these days. Perhaps it’s the increased access to more news that makes cases of discrimination in the classroom seem more frequent than ever before. Parents of students at Winnetonka High School in Kansas City, MO, are up in arms after Marcus Williams, Jr., a senior there, filed a racial harassment complaint with the school district after his basketball coach, Derek Howard, made offensive remarks to him.

Williams told KCTV5.com that when photography students asked him to pose for a picture, the coach stopped and said the words “future welfare recipient” should be printed beneath the photo.

“I just felt belittled, crushed, and utterly discouraged,” Williams said, adding that this is not coach Howard’s first offense. He said in his past two years of interacting with the coach, he regularly made demoralizing comments either directly to African-American students or about them. Consequently, Williams chose not to try out for basketball this year.

Williams’ father, Marcus Williams, Sr. said he wants Howard removed from his coaching and teaching position with the school. So far, Howard has only been placed on paid leave while under investigation.

Dr. Dan Clemens, the district assistant superintendent released a statement saying:

The behaviors reported by this student do not reflect our professional conduct standards and will not be tolerated. We expect all students to be treated with respect by all staff at all times.

I certainly hope that is the case. It’s not shocking to me that these teachers and coaches have the racist mindsets that they do, but I am surprised that they will so blatantly express their bigotry out in the open. What could be motivating them?

Do you think offensive school staff members expect to be protected by the school and get away with making comments like this? More importantly, what are these comments doing to black students’ self esteem?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

More on Madame Noire!

• What to Expect When Moving in With Your Man
• “Weave Wisdom” Episode 1: Weaves 101
• Steal This Star Style: Get These Fab Celeb Looks For Much Less
• 7 Reasons Nice Guys Finish First
• Bad Hair Days: Celebrity Hair Gone Wrong
• Kandi Burruss: Her Hair Wins & Womps Over the Years
• The Truth @bout Natural Hair With Anu: Re-Growing Temple Hair