In her whole life that our nine-year-old daughter Mitike can remember until this year, America has officially embraced hope and progress.
After all, just the day before I brought her home from Ethiopia on August 29, 2008, the Democratic National Convention in Denver nominated Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American presidential candidate. On election night that November, a group of us gathered at a neighbor’s house to watch the results and bite our nails—and when CNN called the election for Obama, we all grabbed spoons and pots and pans and marched jubilantly around our chilly Alaska block, chanting, little one-year-old Mitike happily in the lead, shouting, “Obama! Obama! Obama!” in her Amharic accent.
When CNN called the election for Obama, we all grabbed spoons and pots and pans and marched jubilantly around our chilly Alaska block, chanting.
And because she has been immersed in this kind of progress since the first day she arrived in America, Mitike assumes it is a basic quality of our nation. When Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination from the DNC on July 28 last month, Mitike peered at me and Meredith and asked, “Why are you crying?” We stumbled to explain how incredible this step forward is for our country, to finally have a woman candidate for president. I mumbled something about 1920, Susan B. Anthony, 235 years since Abigail Adams. Meredith tried to explain how the 2016 DNC, with its uplifting of people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, women, the poor, and immigrants, embodied and celebrated the message we long to hear about the United States of America: that in this nation, we work to move closer and closer to increasing the opportunities for all people, because we are stronger and better when we work together. Mitike listened to our muddled emotional explanation and then shrugged. “Moms. That’s just the way America is.”
Of course, I’m grateful that our daughter takes for granted that her adopted country is good, and that it will continue to move forward toward the “more perfect union” for which those wise (and flawed!) writers of the Constitution hoped. But I’m also filled with fear about the future our country could tip into in November. I fear the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist rhetoric of Donald Trump and his supporters. I fear that the country our daughter believes she knows will fail her.
And because she has been immersed in this kind of progress since the first day she arrived in America, Mitike assumes it is a basic quality of our nation.
We Americans find ourselves in a dangerous moment, stretched painfully between what some of us hope our country could be and what Donald J. Trump wants our country to become. As First Lady Michelle Obama proclaimed in her eloquent speech on July 26: “[This election] is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives.” The question has become not a question of policy but a question of whether we teach our children about progress and love, or about divisive hate.What is at stake in this presidential election is not Mitike’s formation. At nine, she believes wholeheartedly that the world requires us to be kind and lovingly accepting of those who are different in any way from us. She trusts that a nation, like a person, is simultaneously fallible and tasked with the responsibility to improve. For eight of her nine years, she has watched and listened (an avid fan of NPR, which I play while I cook dinner) as President Obama has wrestled with immigration, Guantanamo, Osama bin Laden, drone strikes, the auto industry, equal pay for women, police brutality, race, same-sex marriage. Obama has not always made (or been allowed to make) the decisions I wanted him to, but—while my child watched, learning—he worked to lead our nation in the direction of progress.
I fear the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist rhetoric of Donald Trump and his supporters. I fear that the country our daughter believes she knows will fail her.
What is at stake in this election is not who Mitike becomes, but whether she will be safe in her own country—and whether we will be. What is at stake is how America treats Mitike as a person of color and as an immigrant and as a female, and whether her friends at school—many of them refugees, some of them Muslim—will be treated with the respect and given the rights every person in America deserves. What is at stake is whether her mothers’ marriage to each other will continue to be honored as legal, and whether all of us will continue to be able to write and speak freely in this nation without fear of repercussion. What is at stake is whether America will fall prey to its own shadows—like the seething racism that prompts some citizens to call their president unspeakable names, or like the terrifying misogyny that allows Trump to dismiss his vile, derogatory behavior toward women as “locker room talk”—and thus endanger the entire world.
Meredith and I have protected Mitike from many of the ugliest of our nation’s weeping wounds: the details of the Sandy Hook massacre, for example; or the racist comments hurled at Malia Obama online when she announced her acceptance into Harvard last May. I don’t want Mitike to feel that afraid. But every day Trump says or does something more offensive, or proclaims his cavalier apathy toward world affairs, every day his supporters seethe with vitriol toward Obama and anyone else who isn’t a white English man with roots in colonial America, it becomes harder and harder to protect Mitike (and ourselves) from fear.
So I remind myself: our little girl has grown up believing that America stands for progress, so now is the time we model for her that light, as the prophet said, still shines in the darkness.
However, of this I’m certain: if we fall into fear and let our children tremble, we won’t even need to hold the election this coming November. Of course FDR was right: we must fear fear itself most. It is our fear that will defeat us.
So I remind myself: our little girl has grown up believing that America stands for progress, so now is the time we model for her that light, as the prophet said, still shines in the darkness. Mitike and I spent an entire afternoon registering voters in a park here in Denver. On the weekends, we hike in our beautiful mountains and we spend time with our family, trying to talk more about hope and progress than about fear. Every day, Meredith works in her private psychology practice to help people find peace in their lives, and I drive to a high school to teach teenagers how to express themselves and advocate for themselves in writing. And Mitike watches. We chant what Michelle Obama said she teaches her girls: when others go low, we go high. I remind Mitike (and Meredith, and myself) that no matter what happens in November, the general direction of this nation is progress. Just look at how far we’ve come.
This is not the time to be afraid, but the time to act, to vote, to stand up and speak for what (and who) matters, to declare our belief that our nation will continue to progress toward a more inclusive and more just place for all Americans of every kind.That’s what America is, right?
We can’t afford to take for granted how far this country has come. This is not the time to be afraid, but the time to act, to vote (as President Obama said, “Don’t boo, vote”), to stand up and speak for what (and who) matters, to declare our belief that our nation will continue to progress toward a more inclusive and more just place for all Americans of every kind.
Solange Knowles may be Beyoncé’s younger sister, but that doesn’t mean she’s content to stay shadowed in a corner.
Yes, Solange may not be a household brand, but I can’t help but think that she prefers it this way. This level of celebrity allows Solange to directly critique anti-blackness and white supremacy in America without the fear of public backlash that could destroy her pop culture bankability.
Beyoncé, who rarely gives interviews, may not take a publicly vocalized stance on issues of social justice, but she often makes her support known through financial support. Earlier this year, Queen Bey and husband Jay Z donated $1.5 million to the Black Lives Matter movement, in addition to other civil rights organizations. In the beginning of the summer, she gave around $82,000 from her Formation World Tour to assist the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. People may criticize Beyoncé for not literally speaking out in a blunt, unapologetic way like the actor Jesse Williams is prone to do. However, this has never been a part of Beyoncé’s handling of her image as an entertainer or member of pop culture royalty.
In the case of Solange, she utilizes social media in a form that her older sister avoids. Her Twitter and Instagram, along with her website, Saint Heron, routinely confront racism and the country’s impulse to uphold white privilege.
In the case of Solange, she utilizes social media in a form that her older sister avoids. Her Twitter and Instagram, along with her website, Saint Heron, routinely confront racism and the country’s impulse to uphold white privilege.
I can only wish that I’d grown up with someone like Solange as a public figure who is so insistent on protecting Black girls and women. On her Twitter, Solange recounted an unpleasant and highly uncomfortable concert experience in New Orleans. Solange, her husband, and her eleven-year-old son, Julez, attended a Kraftwerk concert at the Orpheum Theater. The audience at the electronica concert was not diverse: Solange noted that the overwhelming majority of patrons were white. When Solange danced to a song, a group of white women told her to sit down. Solange refused, and the women threw a lime at her.
To be Black in white spaces means that you are suddenly blessed and cursed with hyperawareness…
To the naive reader, this story may seem nothing more than an unfortunate incident to be chalked up to rude and drunk concert attendees. For Black girls and women who understand what Solange meant by the term “white spaces,” it’s affirmation of a long-known truth.
To be Black in white spaces means that you are suddenly blessed and cursed with hyperawareness, injected with the X-Men ability to interpret not just outright racism but malevolence cloaked in a cloudy layer of passive aggression and microaggressions. To be Black in white spaces means that you are both the designated ambassador of your entire race and no one at all, invisible, with an interchangeable face. In an essay titled “And Do You Belong? I Do” and posted on Saint Heron, Solange elaborated on her Tweets. She wrote:
It usually does not include “please.” It does not include “will you.” It does not include “would you mind,” for you must not even be worth wasting their mouths forming these respectable words. Although, you usually see them used seconds before or after you.
You don’t feel that most of the people in these incidents do not like black people, but simply are a product of their white supremacy and are exercising it on you without caution, care, or thought.
Many times the tone just simply says, “I do not feel you belong here.”
Anti-blackness is not solely relegated to overtly hostile or malicious displays of bigotry. There are numerous ways to make someone feel as though they don’t belong, as though their safety has been compromised. Later on in her essay, Solange wrote, “You constantly see the media having a hard time contextualizing black women and men as victims every day, even when it means losing their own lives….You realize that you never called these women racists, but people will continuously put those words in your mouth.”
White people who have deluded themselves into believing that they are progressive liberals often tout the phrase, “I don’t see color.” They frequently follow up with something along the lines of, “I don’t care if you’re black or white or green or blue,” ironically disproving their point, as they classify minority status as akin to alien foreignness. I didn’t grow up in the South, but that doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to racism, and to feeling like my blackness, my “Otherness,” doesn’t fit into my very white surroundings. The institution of whiteness ruled that my identity wasn’t authentic enough, that my blackness was dependent upon adhering to a narrow vision of blackness as defined by the white gaze. Boys who I deemed the love of my life have accused me of being too sensitive, of imagining things, of seeing fire where there isn’t smoke. That’s the clever trick of white privilege: the combination of willful ignorance and lack of lived experience imagines equality where it does not exist.
That’s the clever trick of white privilege: the combination of willful ignorance and lack of lived experience imagines equality where it does not exist.
I don’t believe that silence is a beneficial defense mechanism. In a society where being Black is punishable by death, silence only aids white supremacy. Solange recognizes that silence does not encourage change. She also realizes that she can use her public platform to connect with other Black girls and women and make them feel less isolated and alone.
Solange recently interviewed actress Amandla Stenberg for the February 2016 issue of Teen Vogue and spoke to that feeling of unquantifiable kinship between Black girls. She noted, “There’s a secret language shared among black girls who are destined to climb mountains and cross rivers in a world that tells us to belong to the valleys that surround us. You learn it very young, and although it has no words, you hear it clearly.” Knowing this language has made it possible for women to produce safe spaces in the midst of uninhabitable land. It’s a sense of higher consciousness, the look that transpired between the only other Black woman and me in my graduate school writing class, the exchange that prompted me to grab the open seat next to her. A feeling of anchoring myself. It is less a shared code of pain than it is a show of solidarity.
Anger is often viewed as destructive. Solange challenges that idea, arguing that anger can be a healthy, even necessary response to unfathomable atrocities ranging from the physical to the emotional and mental.
Anger is often viewed as destructive. Solange challenges that idea, arguing that anger can be a healthy, even necessary response to unfathomable atrocities ranging from the physical to the emotional and mental. While Beyoncé seems to filter her frustrations through subversive tactics that are primarily based on a nonpersonal, business-first sensibility, Solange participates in racial politics via personal reflection.
The media may deem Solange “crazy” for speaking out, as is often the case when Black people refuse to be complicit in racially motivated abuse. Solange is not exposing anything new or revolutionary, but her comments are viewed as such due to America’s legacy of deep denial. In the closing part of her essay, Solange remarks, “We belong. We belong. We belong. We built this.” Anger is testament to this mantra, a reminder that blackness is not validated by trauma.
To be a black woman online is to realize that any minute, your safe space can be compromised.
The anonymity of the internet enables Red Pill fanatics and basement-dwelling trolls to spew hatred without serious repercussions. When the general public talks about the need to combat online bullying and harassment, the discussion rarely includes women of color. Black women should not have to accept racist, misogynistic violence from faceless cowards lurking behind egg icons. The threshold of harassment that black women face online, especially within the context of social media, is beyond tolerable. It is toxic and menacing, abuse ranging from doxxing (exposing a person’s personal information, including home address, telephone number, etc.) to death threats.
Take for example the abuse from racist Twitter users aimed at Ghostbusters actress and SNL cast member Leslie Jones. The Ghostbusters movie recently premiered, and angry fanboys were feeling extra vicious. Jones faced a seemingly endless barrage of racist attacks. She retweeted the insults in hopes that Twitter support would ban the users. Unfortunately, support turned a blind eye to the mounting abuse. One user compared her to a gorilla, to which Jones responded, “I don’t understand.” Another troll with an icon of a stick figure in an SS uniform said, “She’s extremely ugly.” The collection of usernames and accompanying icons were just what one would expect from an army of human garbage.
Black women should not have to accept racist, misogynistic violence from faceless cowards lurking behind egg icons.
Understandably, Jones quickly lost the motivation to expose her attackers. Fans, costars, and Ghostbusters director Paul Feig expressed support for Jones. Twitter user @MarissaRei1 started the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ in order to combat the cruel, crude, and ruthless abuse. Although it was comforting to see people stick up for Jones, it’s disappointing and disheartening that such hatred could go unmonitored and unpunished. Do we really want to condone and encourage an online culture that permits the daily dehumanization of black women?
When dissecting pop culture, the obvious racial bias is magnified. There’s no shortage of white knights for white women. Writing for The Guardian, Ijeoma Oluo noted, “Many other women of color – especially black women – on the internet face the same abuse that Jones is now facing, and we will tell you that this isn’t a harmless prank, this isn’t about hurt feelings or even the sting of a racist comment.” She added, “This is a deliberate campaign of abuse perpetrated on us to keep us off of the internet, and it needs to be taken seriously.”
Although it was comforting to see people stick up for Jones, it’s disappointing and disheartening that such hatred could go unmonitored and unpunished. Do we really want to condone and encourage an online culture that permits the daily dehumanization of black women?
In a 2014 study conducted by Women, Action, and the Media, the group gathered 811 reports of harassment on Twitter. Out of the 161 serious cases cited and reported to Twitter staff, “Twitter wound up taking action on only 55 percent of those cases—most frequently, they suspended accounts temporarily.”
Earlier this year, Twitter announced that it would be implementing a new protocol to deal with online harassment. Nick Pickles, Twitter UK’s Head of Policy, said, “This comes from the top of the company – safety is never finished.” Unlike the US, the UK has laws that “offer users some protection against more extreme harassment and several people have been jailed.” Twitter’s publicly documented efforts to deal with online toxicity almost seem hollow. Considering the fact that online abuse of women has become the expectation, rather than the exception, such a promise feels like an empty-hearted effort to placate those who demand stricter and swifter retribution.
Ijeoma Oluo noted, “Many other women of color – especially black women – on the internet face the same abuse that Jones is now facing. … This is a deliberate campaign of abuse perpetrated on us to keep us off of the internet, and it needs to be taken seriously.”
Although I obviously do not have the same global platform as Jones, I’ve faced online misogynoir. Whenever I write about race, I’m met with instant backlash. Not all of the responses I receive are cruel, but it’s too easy to remember the negative. No matter the type of essay or article, from personal essay to pop culture commentary, the racists are angry that I dare even to speak up. In real life and online, I’ve been told that I’m “too sensitive” or that I’m the “true racist” for rightly naming my enemy. In the eyes of the racists, white supremacy is a nonexistent institution, just as the American Dream is possible for anyone willing to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
When Jones experienced racism, some Twitter users recommended that she take the high road and simply ignore the abuse. Why must black women be expected to turn the other cheek? Perhaps it has to do with the stereotype of the Strong Black Woman. But if studies have proven that racism can have a dire impact on a black person’s mental and physical health, why aren’t these rampant incidents of abuse take much more seriously?
Out of the 161 serious cases cited and reported to Twitter staff, “Twitter wound up taking action on only 55 percent of those cases—most frequently, they suspended accounts temporarily.”
In an interview with Alternet, an African-American woman with more than 116,000 Twitter followers said that she switches her avatars in order to get some relief from the trolls. With the icon of a white man, Sydette noticed a drastic difference in user interaction. She observed, “As a white man, that was the most fun I had online in terms of actually getting to talk to people and not be insulted by them.” Sydette added, “People thought I was wrong, people thought I was ridiculous but nobody thought I was stupid. I received fewer slurs and people were a lot more interested in my thought process than when I was anything else.”
As a black woman writer, my work is never separated from my gender and/or racial identity. On the other hand, my racial background is a vital part of my personal identity. I would not be the person I am today without the acknowledgment of my roots. I fiercely protect and defend my ethnic heritage because for too long, I was made to believe it made me worthless and ugly.
Before taking a break from Twitter, Jones said: “WTF!! These people hate themselves. You have to hate yourself to put out that type of hate. I mean, on my worst day I can’t think of this type of hate to put out. I don’t know how to feel. I’m numb. Actually numb. I see the words and pics and videos. Videos, y’all. Meaning people took time to spew hate.…Like no shame or compassion for human life. It scares the fuck out of me!”
Social media can be an inspirational tool when in the hands of the benevolent, and an extension of our culture’s legacy of racism when under the control of the malicious and malevolent. Until Twitter makes good on their word to take drastic disciplinary action against these vile attackers, black women are forced to make the choice between staying on social media and not backing down against very real, very disturbing threats or retreating for the sake of sanity and self-care.
If there’s one female rap artist who has maintained an unapologetic dedication to authenticity and personal vision, it’s Missy Elliott.
Although some members of the younger generation seemed to be unaware of the legendary MC, producer, singer, and songwriter until her 2015 Super Bowl performance with Katy Perry, Elliott has been instrumental to the evolving narrative of hip-hop.
Following six years off the air, Hip Hop Honors will return to VH1 with an all-female showcase intended to “applaud the women groundbreakers and innovators who led a movement and rose to the top of a male-dominated genre to make their voices heard.” In addition to Elliott, Queen Latifah and Salt-N-Peppa will be honored. The recognition and accolades for Elliott are more than deserved. She is a five-time Grammy winner with record sales amounting to over 30 million albums worldwide. Notably, she is currently the only female rapper to have all six albums reach RIAA platinum certified.
Elliott’s success has never relied on chasing trends. Her longevity is based upon her resistance, even outright refusal to adhere to narrow expectations. She fashions bravado out of the weird, surreal, cartoonish, and avant-garde.
Elliott eschews the notion that a woman in a hip-hop video must appear sexually enticing and be as close to naked as possible. Instead of presenting herself as passive arm candy, the trash bag outfit is an undeniable means of subversive control within a heavily male-dominated industry.
From the very beginning of her career as a solo rapper, Elliott has utilized unforgettable visuals that embrace a brand of femininity and sensuality that dismiss the male gaze. Who can forget Elliott’s striking video for “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” the lead single from her 1997 debut album? The video contains all of the traits of a classic 90s hip-hop video, from the signature directing style of Hype Williams and the fish-eye lens to the loud neon color scheme and plentiful array of cameos, including Lil’ Kim and Puff Daddy. One of the most memorable outfits showcases Elliott in a shiny black inflated trash bag, big hoop earrings, and dark sunglasses attached to a sparkly headpiece. By donning such an outfit, Elliott eschews the notion that a woman in a hip-hop video must appear sexually enticing and be as close to naked as possible. Instead of presenting herself as passive arm candy, the trash bag outfit is an undeniable means of subversive control within a heavily male-dominated industry.
This isn’t to say that Elliott is in favor of a hierarchy of female sexuality. Rather, artistic choices such as the trash bag outfit challenge the idea that the traditional video vixen aesthetic is the only acceptable form of female sensuality and/or beauty. In other words, Elliott may not have the body of peers and past collaborators such as Trina, Lil’ Kim, or Foxy Brown, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to hide in a corner. Similarly, Elliott wears a Mega Man costume in the video for “Sock It 2 Me.” She’s not a femme fatale or a part of the scenery. She’s a superhero, an advanced android, a nonhuman fighting machine.
Elliott’s feminism may be cut from the same cloth as the aforementioned pop culture titans, but I would argue that the rapper’s philosophy of body positivity involves elevating all body types and not just the 36-24-36 bust-waist-hip ratio deemed the only radical antithesis to white, supermodel, high-fashion thinness.
In an article for Dazed, writer Kat George points out, “Elliott, a pioneering woman in hip hop, wasn’t looking for the approval of the court of popular opinion…she wasn’t looking to be a trending hashtag. We often give artists like Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé applause for championing body positivity, because as ‘curvy’ women of colour, they’re presenting an ‘other’ in a predominantly skinny-centric, whitewashed industry.” Elliott’s feminism may be cut from the same cloth as the aforementioned pop culture titans, but I would argue that the rapper’s philosophy of body positivity involves elevating all body types and not just the 36-24-36 bust-waist-hip ratio deemed the only radical antithesis to white, supermodel, high-fashion thinness.
Even if she hasn’t outwardly labeled herself a feminist or appeared on stage in front of a huge, blazing FEMINIST sign at the VMAs, Elliott’s music has always been about championing women and disavowing sexist double standards. Take for example the still-relevant track, “She’s a Bitch,” from her 1998 album, Da Real World. The song addresses the fact that women are punished for being assertive or aggressive. A woman in a position of power is often viewed as a “bitch,” while her male counterpart is given a free pass on his behavior. He never faces a fraction of the scorn and scrutiny as the woman and is simply regarded as confident and self-assured. He’s just a man being a man, whereas the woman is believed to have violated some archaic rule of femininity and decorum.
Elliott takes the word bitch and reclaims its razor-sharpness as a badge of honor, a marker of indomitable strength and capitalistic prowess.
Elliott raps, “She’s a bitch / When you say my name / Talk mo’ junk but won’t look my way / She’s a bitch / See I got more cheese / So back on up while I roll up my sleeves.” Elliott takes the word bitch and reclaims its razor-sharpness as a badge of honor, a marker of indomitable strength and capitalistic prowess. In a conversation with Interviewprior to the release of the song’s music video, Elliott said, “Music is a male-dominated field. Women are not always taken as seriously as we should be, so sometimes we have to put our foot down. To other people that may come across as being a bitch, but it’s just knowing what we want and being confident.”
Is financial independence the key to feminism? It may not be the end-all, be-all, but it’s linked to freedom from the oppression of a male-dominated society. The motto of autonomy via financial prosperity is a theme that repeatedly pops up in Elliott’s work. An obvious hit is “Work It,” from 2002’s Under Construction. Elliott’s swagger encompasses the demand for sexual satisfaction to money as a means of individual empowerment. She declares, “Girl, girl, get that cash / If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin’ your ass / Ain’t no shame, ladies do your thing/ Just make sure you ahead of the game.”
Not only can money provide empowerment, but so can sex. Songs such as “One Minute Man” take the stigma out of a woman’s need for sexual satisfaction by critiquing a man’s supposed bedroom skills.
Not only can money provide empowerment, but so can sex. Songs such as “One Minute Man” take the stigma out of a woman’s need for sexual satisfaction by critiquing a man’s supposed bedroom skills. In “Hot Boyz,” a man’s attractiveness is dependent upon his ability to provide not only in the bedroom, but in terms of material goods and reputational clout. Elliott asks, “What’s your name, cause I’m impressed / Can you treat me good, I won’t settle for less / You a hot boy, a rock boy / A fun toy.” In the context of Elliott’s lyrics, men are never the center of her world, but they can serve as fun stepping stones or pleasurable distractions.
Without Missy Elliott, there would be a noticeable void in both hip-hop and R&B. Her latest single, “WTF (Where They From),” proves that Elliott’s creativity, though seemingly dormant since 2005’s The Cookbook, never left. The single, produced by longtime friend Pharrell, feels as fresh, energetic, and funky as anything on her previous albums. As she said in an interview with Billboard, “Unfortunately, breaking news, there is only one Missy.”
Rihanna has gone from Good Girl Gone Bad to bonafide style icon, pop culture heavyweight, and international superstar.
In the past few years, she’s successfully turned her name into that of an influential tastemaker, a woman often imitated but never duplicated, who does what she wants, when she wants, without fear or worry of judgment or disapproval.
The release of her eighth studio album, Anti, marks a decidedly different direction in the Rihanna sound. In an interview with Vogue, she admits, “It might not be some automatic record that will be Top 40. But I felt like I earned the right to do that now.” Anti, unlike previous albums, doesn’t settle for a theme-driven package of perfectly produced pop bangers and radio-friendly tunes. From the SZA-featured opening track, “Consideration,” to the Drake-aided, dancehall-infused “Work,” Riri’s Anti prefers the visceral power of atmosphere.
Despite the variations in style and production per song, the album’s overall intent is to conjure a certain mood. Whether she’s venting frustrations with overwhelming love affairs gone wrong or lust at first sight, the album wields Rihanna’s voice as both weapon and refuge. In a poem written by Chloe Mitchell exclusively commissioned for the album, Mitchell’s words provide an unapologetic mission statement:
I sometimes fear that I am misunderstood.
It is simply because what I want to say,
what I need to say, won’t be heard.
Heard in a way I so rightfully deserve.
What I choose to say is of so much substance
That people just won’t understand the depth of my message.
So my voice is not my weakness,
It is the opposite of what others are afraid of.
My voice is my suit and armor,
My shield, and all that I am.
Writing for Billboard, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd notes in her review of Anti that Rihanna “exists on the languorous edge of Carefree Black Girlness, all Instagrams from Saint Barts and red carpet stunting and relaxed dismissals of thirsty men pretending to know her.” Rihanna, both the brand and the public persona, does not thrive on attention, but rather the seductive thrill of self-fulfillment. Her image is not necessarily about accessibility or even likeability, but unabashed ownership of the self. She is not concerned with role-model status. On the contrary, obeying such strict demands would compromise her sense of authenticity. The Rihanna brand doesn’t just advocate independence, because independence without the foundation of self-fulfillment is a hollow achievement.
The Carefree Black Girl realizes that pain is a part of life, but she does not drown under the weight of struggle.
The concept of the Carefree Black Girl seems to have been born from social media and (Black) Tumblr culture. In an essay for Refinery29, Jamala Johns explains, “There are varying ways in which the title is bestowed, but a common tone connects everything. It’s the freedom and exuberance of simple moments and pleasures: clutching flowers, enjoying the company of your equally stylish friends, reveling in creative endeavors, and even finding the ethereal beauty in not-so-carefree moments.” She adds, “For women of color, such basic depictions continue to go underrepresented.”
In the world of Anti, to be in love does not promise salvation.
The Carefree Black Girl attempts to soften and humanize the crushing, insular cage of the Angry Black Woman. The Carefree Black Girl is radical in the sense that she does not submit to the expectations dictated by the establishment of white supremacy. The Carefree Black Girl realizes that pain is a part of life, but she does not drown under the weight of struggle. The Carefree Black Girl searches for freedom and self-fulfillment beyond society’s paltry offerings. She seeks what white supremacy routinely denies her: the ability to radiate inner peace despite the harsh cruelties of everyday life. This does not mean that the Carefree Black Girl is not allowed to feel self-doubt, anxiety, fear,or disappointment.
Anti is as joyous as it is melancholy. Tracks such as “Desperado” and “Never Ending” showcase the unraveling of romance and the portrayal of love as a force of destruction and ruin. In the world of Anti, to be in love does not promise salvation. Love itself is often two-faced, a fight for domination and control. “Desperado,” which samples background vocals from “Waiting Game” by Banks, talks about a lover who is on the run and the prospect of escaping with him. Rihanna sings:
If you want, we can be runaways
Running from any sight of love
Yeah, yeah, there ain’t nothin’
There ain’t nothin’ here for me
There ain’t nothin’ here for me anymore
But I don’t wanna be alone
It is not love that motivates this unexpected union, but the tortured desire to run away. Similarly, “Never Ending,” written by Dido and Paul Herman, contemplates the mixed emotions of opening one’s heart after a devastating breakup. She sings:
They’ll never understand
This feeling always gets away
Wishing I could hold on longer
Why does it have to feel so strange
To be in love again, be in love again, be in love again?
Love is not portrayed as a magnificent source of pure happiness and freedom, but an unpredictable and mysterious enigma with its own agenda. Anti’s vision of the Carefree Black Girl is not superhuman or inhuman. She is complicated and vulnerable and does not sacrifice self-awareness for the comfort of oblivious denial. Billboard notes the moody peaks and valleys of the album’s sound, declaring, “Anti is evidence that being America’s foremost Carefree Black Girl is a beleaguering endeavor, one destined to land a bad gal in a bout of depression now and again.”
Anti’s vision of the Carefree Black Girl is not superhuman or inhuman. She is complicated and vulnerable and does not sacrifice self-awareness for the comfort of oblivious denial.
Looking inward is not always pleasant, and the truth is not always flattering, but self-reflection can act as a healing salve and serve as a defensive barrier against the antagonistic violence of white supremacy. Rihanna’s Anti is fueled by the basic principles of the Carefree Black Girl ideology. Yet listeners cannot discount the unflinching chameleon nature of the album or the fullness of its emotions. Anti presents the idea that the Carefree Black Girl is not about blocking out negativity or distress, but about using these emotions to achieve self-actualization. In other words, Black girl, in all your contradictions, you are enough.
This summer, I spent some time re-reading Anne of Green Gables, a book that I turned to frequently in my childhood. It was easy to fall into it, but it also made me think of the lessons we learn—the habits we form—when we are young readers.
In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved classic, middle-aged siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help them with their Prince Edward Island farm. But as the result of a miscommunication, instead of a sturdy boy the Cuthberts end up with red-headed Anne Shirley, whose unself-conscious chatter and vivid imagination soon win over shy Matthew and uptight Marilla.
The novel follows Anne as she befriends “kindred spirits,” including her bosom friend the neighbor girl Diana Barry, attends classes at Avonlea village’s one-room schoolhouse (and breaks a slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head for calling her carrots), accidentally puts salt in a cake instead of sugar, dyes her hair green, dreams of dresses with puffed sleeves, and excels when she attends teacher’s college.
Anne is a daydreamer, but intelligent and hard working. Throughout, Anne learns and matures, but the book also charts her progress from mistrusted stranger in town—an orphan—to being a member of the community of Avonlea.
Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, was Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery’s debut. It met with instant success, and Montgomery went on to write nineteen more novels, including five more in the Anne series, a few books that focus on Anne’s friends and children, and the Emily books.
In many ways, Anne of Green Gables is about the commonplace—village life and growing up. But it is also about the power of imagination and storytelling. Anne’s parents die when she is a baby and she is taken in by a Mrs. Thomas, who, according to Anne, is “poor and ha[s] a drunken husband.” Young Anne helps raise the Thomases’ four children, and when the husband dies after falling under a train, she goes to Mrs. Hammond, who has eight children. Of Mrs. Hammond’s family, Anne says, “I’m sure I could never have lived there if I hadn’t had an imagination.”
Anne takes refuge from the real danger of her early life in stories, and it is through making stories that she gains friends in Avonlea. After an absence from school, for instance, Montgomery writes:
Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner time.
(By the way, one of the pleasures of re-reading Anne of Green Gables comes from appreciating the things that the girls do to entertain themselves in the early 1900s.)
But there is clearly tension between the everyday and the imaginative. Marilla constantly disapproves of Anne’s “heathenish” thoughts, and when Anne and Diana dream up a Haunted Wood including a ghostly child who lays its cold fingers on people, both Marilla and Diana’s mother object.
Indeed, what Montgomery calls a sign of Anne’s maturity involves favoring more realistic literature—a movement encouraged and endorsed by Anne’s beloved teacher, Miss Stacy. Anne tells Marilla:
She found me reading a book one day called The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it.
As for her own writing, Anne says, “[Miss Stacy] won’t let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own, too.”
Anne is told again and again to turn her imagination to less sensational channels: to favor realism over the gothic or fanciful—that there is a moral superiority to the more realistic even when it comes to imaginative play.
Within these classic, realistic novels about young women by Western, Christian women writers, the idea that realism is somehow fitter—somehow morally and aesthetically superior—is a refrain.
I read Anne when I was maybe in fourth or fifth grade, and distracted by the other delights of the book, I didn’t give a lot of thought to Miss Stacy’s edicts on literature.
But I probably absorbed them, because they were aimed at me—at young women readers. Later in life, Miss Stacy’s message was reinforced by similar sentiments in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. In Alcott’s classic, it is Professor Bhaer who is horrified by the “blood and thunder” tales that Jo March writes, causing her to change the direction of her work. And in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (a book that I love and on which I wrote my undergraduate thesis), Henry Tilney lectures avid novel-reader Catherine Morland after she imagines his father (and her holiday host) to be guilty of all manner of gothic horrors.
Within these classic, realistic novels about young women by Western, Christian women writers, the idea that realism is somehow fitter—somehow morally and aesthetically superior—is a refrain. And sure, part of this is to defend the work that these women are already doing; it is in the lady novelist’s interests to claim that her own works can be harmless—even beneficial to her readers. Fiction is, after all, a “pack of lies,” and creating a world inside a book is tantamount to challenging God. And accepting money for these labors sure doesn’t help the woman writer’s cause.
Realism, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to build a world—it seems less like an untruth. Realism, then, looks to the unschooled eye more genteel, less subversive, less deceptive, more ladylike, more socially acceptable.
It’s Anne! But with dark hair and violet eyes! And, as it turns out, psychic visions.
But it is also interesting how drawn both Anne and her author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, are to the “fascinating and creepy”—which itself hints to the reading habits that Montgomery formed as a young reader. Montgomery’s most famous books after Anne, the Emily series, contain light supernatural elements. (For that matter, Louisa May Alcott also wrote sensational stories under her pen name A. M. Barnard.)The title of the first Emily book likely intentionally follows the naming scheme of the Anne books: Emily of New Moon. Like Anne, Emily is also an orphan raised by dour, older people. It’s Anne! But with dark hair and violet eyes! And, as it turns out, psychic visions.
For young me, reading about Emily after Anne—to read a similar narrative about a similar character by the same author only to have the book veer into the supernatural made me uneasy. And that was both because, well, ghosts and seances and any hint of the unknown, and also because it put my relationship with Montgomery’s “wholesome,” realistic books on unstable ground.
I wonder what would happen if women weren’t told so often what to write; if they weren’t faulted for imagining the fantastic and the supernatural.
But it didn’t disturb enough for me to stop reading the rest of the trilogy or Montgomery’s other (sometimes disturbing) books. Because even though I was unsettled by Emily, I found it fascinating. The capacity was in me to enjoy these books—and in Montgomery to pen them.
I wonder what would happen if women weren’t told so often what to write; if they weren’t faulted for imagining the fantastic and the supernatural.
Now, I think about what would have happened to my outlook—to my reading habits—had I read Emily before Anne, if my expectations for Montgomery’s work had been different. Would it have made me more open to reading more frightening, more sensational, more “thrilling” books? Or maybe I am seduced by the idea of another me who is somehow braver because she can enjoy things that frighten her; a me who enjoys fewer limits on her reading on her imagination who lets her mind go farther, if even in a small way.
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