I remember a time when “healthy food” was prescribed for patients whose blood pressure was too high; whose diet needed to consist of more fiber. To my mind, healthy food was clinical, sterile, bland food on a menu medical doctors made. Cooks, however, made food that “was sayin somethin!” It was food that grew in gardens behind houses in plots as deep as a neighbor’s backyard. These gardens also grew inside brick beds lining chain link fences. It was food that produced an abundance and so was shared between neighbors, family, and friends. It was food that would be rinsed in deep utility sinks in basements–not because one needed special tools or solutions to remove pesticides, but because it provided the space that made rinsing and cutting easier.

Those were different times. They were days that included walking to the grocery store with one’s own personal grocery cart and pulling that same cart home afterwards. Those were also the days when people rode bikes to visit friends or pushed lawn mowers to cut the lawn at one’s own home; where we worked shovels to clear driveways and walkways. Those were days when children were not told to exercise because they were walking, pulling, riding, and working on real-life tasks. Gyms were sites where P.E. classes were held and basketball games contested. No one purchased a membership to a gym (unless, I suppose, when someone bought season tickets to basketball games).

Once upon a time when food was good, tomatoes could be eaten like apples because they were just that sweet. Once upon a time when food was good, peppers were hot, mint was fragrant, and (collard) greens were so robust one had to take a break from eating in order to pray for the great fortune of having that bite. Once upon a time when food was good, people stopped eatin that mess the doctor prescribed since he thought Jello was dessert and that bananas should be broken in half and eaten on separate mornings no matter how small the fruit. Once upon a time, the only thing we called “fresh” was (maybe) milk because calling those vegetables that grew right outdoors “fresh” would have been redundant.

…the U.S. has got to be the only place where good food had to be made healthy.

For a while now, I’ve marked the significance of April 4, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, as one that calls for serious reflection. This year has been different in how I feel about the loss; this time, mourning accompanied contemplation. Easter, I’m sure, has everything to do with this difference. In 1968, April 4 occurred on Thursday and not Sunday–Easter Sunday was observed on April 14 in 1968–this year, Easter preparation coincided with the King assassination.

I have started gathering images that inspire novel ways of considering the assassination of King. Below is a glimpse of what our dates would look like if our calendar mirrored the events immediately preceding, then following King’s violent death:

Saturday: April 6, 1968

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday: April 5, 1968

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday: April 4, 1968

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday: April 3, 1968

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully, I’ll be in top form soon. EMM

The next time someone tells you that they were an “A” student in college, you might consider asking them if they knew that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a “C” student in college and that he earned a “C” in public speaking while attending seminary. King’s goals were bigger than being an “A” student; he set his sights on being a graduate. As his Morehouse transcript reveals, earning a 2.48 was enough to ensure graduation. Beyond that, King would prove that “A” work does not always confirm one’s brilliance nor does a “C” confirm one’s mediocrity. Brilliance and genius just might exceed institutional measures of assessment.

In past years, I never thought much about Women’s History because, unlike Black History Month, it did not come with sufficient indictments. Black History Month calls attention to interlocking systems of domination that cast black Americans as this nation’s civic trash. Even though the celebratory aspects of Black History Month are far too often cartoonish, this sanitized version of history itself becomes a subject of interrogation. Women’s History Month hasn’t gotten to a point beyond “I am woman hear me roar.” I often find it dishonest in its embrace of “women” without consideration for the divisiveness of race and class. Recent photos and discussions of Gloria Steinem offer examples.

On March 4, 2015, The Huffington Post ran Cavan Sieczkowski article “Gloria Steinem Wears a Clit Ring Like a Boss.” Sieczkowski calls Steinem a “feminist icon and all-around legend” before sharing a story and a photo of Steinem wearing the “Clitoring” posted on Instragram. Among the reasons that Sieczkowski finds this extraordinary is that Steinem once made this assessment of how women’s bodies are discussed:

“I didn’t hear words that were accurate, much less prideful,” she famously said. “For example, I never once heard the word ‘clitoris.’ It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function [other] than to feel pleasure. (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)”

So Beyonce can’t call herself a feminist because she’s hypersexual, sensual, or whatever, but Steinem wears a clit ring and feminists everywhere should stand up and salute?! The fact that Steinem and her fans think these rings and pendants–that cost $130 and $540 respectively–ignores women of color who have historically longed for sexual privacy rather than public scrutiny and who fought for their right to possess their bodies, as well as their sexual lives should celebrate the ornamentation of our actual exposure? Doesn’t work for me.

I find Gloria Steinem’s critique of patriarchy trapped within the purview of her white female body. Forget the “simultaneity” of oppression or “interlocking” systems of oppression, for Steinem, inequality and injustice are solely informed by gender. I remain incredibly appalled by her 2008 op-ed piece in the Times where she completely ignores how race and gender interlock and in doing so, Steinem grants Barack Obama more currency than Quentin Tarantino ascribed to Django. In claiming gender discrimination against Clinton, Steinem writes:

Black men were given the vote a half century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

If only Steinem could name one black person, ONE, who has been given anything in this country but pain and folly, I might clench my teeth a little less forcefully than I am now given her suggestion that there is a public wage of blackness (see Du Bois). With the passing of the 15th Amendment, all U.S. citizens were granted the right to vote but it wasn’t until 1965 when black people didn’t necessarily have to die casting a ballot (now we die for trying to go home from the store during halftime, asking for help after a car crash, sleeping on the sofa while police officers and a camera crew come to arrest our fathers). With a currency rate about as valuable as Monopoly money, black (wo)men certainly held token positions of civic authority but their tears have never led to the macabre scenes of vigilante justice for whistling offenses…and those tears certainly didn’t win one particular black man sufficient votes to win New Hampshire.

For me, Women’s History Month has had the feel of Steinem’s highly problematic argument concerning Hillary Clinton’s entitlement to, at least, the presidential nomination. Recently, I’ve started creating my own vision of Women’s History Month that looks less reactionary than I once envisioned. Titus Kaphar’s art, the painting depicted above being only one example of an incredible body of work, reflects the possibility for the kind of creative, trenchant, and interesting interrogation of gender that I find more fulfilling than seeing Steinem wear “a clit ring like a boss.”