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Sincerely Brooklyn is a lifestyle blog that provides cultural commentary of my life in Brooklyn. With cultural insight and perspective, this is a creative outlet for the beauty obsessed, social and political observer in constant pursuit of great food, great company and fun times. 

Ramblings

Milwaukee, NYC and Poverty Deniers

Sin

A young me

A young me

So somewhere along the line somebody thought it was a good idea to make light of poverty in Milwaukee because of the stereotypes they have of poverty in New York City.

Let's get this straight...

I didn’t just have an ‘aha’ moment. I didn’t seek to drag people into relentless rants about poverty politics one day. I talk about poverty for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m not staying up late nights convincing people that my childhood in Milwaukee was so terrible that I can barely go on with my life. That just simply is untrue. It’s not necessarily genius to tell one’s story of poverty. It’s not a new or innovative idea to write about what it means to grow up poor in America.

But it was important to me to elevate and publicize the trauma of poverty in small urban cities like Milwaukee.

My mother, who has lived in Milwaukee most of her life, is convinced that poverty in Milwaukee can’t be bad in comparison to larger cities like New York. Or, even worse, that poverty in Milwaukee can’t be expressed with contempt. But the truth is, I saw those very comments on this blog. Of course criticisms tended to converge on the familiar and limited argument that people should not speak about poverty as anything less than a triumphant experience, especially since it ‘can’t be as bad as New York City’s poverty’.

Oh right, and how exactly do you know?

Milwaukee is not New York City for a whole host of reasons but namely because of its sheer population difference. New York City is 16 times larger than Milwaukee.  It is depicted in movies like New Jack City and Precious. It is rapped about in songs like Hard Knock Life and Hate it or Love It. It is showcased in television shows like New York Undercover and Law and Order. Take any Spike Lee movie and the average American thinks they have a good understanding of New York City poverty. Try to think of songs, movies, and popular culture that depict poverty in smaller urban cities like Milwaukee, Flint, Cleveland, or even St. Louis and you may come up with a handful. But poverty in these cities are equally as important and should remain stories for people to learn about as valid examples of despair.

While I believe the arguments of poverty deniers that ‘poverty in Milwaukee is not that bad’ and is ‘not worse than New York City’ are fundamentally wrong, they tend to resonate with people for several reasons. One, we as Americans tend to be drawn to a culture of resiliency. It doesn’t matter the trauma, we are supposed to be stronger, right? Two, people are convinced through the media that they know more about New York City than they actually do. Finally, people tend to mistake their own personal experience in a city or region for a shared experience. Because you were poor in Milwaukee and feel just fine doesn’t mean that the experience wasn’t deeply damaging to the next person (and vice versa). And since you have never experienced poverty in New York City or Milwaukee or anywhere else, how can you accurately tell me how I felt? And why are you interested in distancing yourself from me by ‘otherizing’ my poverty?

I'm really concerned that there are people who believe that if poverty doesn’t happen in the Marcy Housing Projects of Bedford Stuyvesant as outlined in a Jay Z song then poverty has to be outright denied, tempered down, or seen as some victorious hazing exercise. But I didn’t grow up in Marcy, I grew up in Milwaukee. There were not a lot of rap songs helping me cope with that. And I didn’t feel strong, or proud, or tough, I just felt hurt. I was hurt that I had to see my brother’s face lay bare on the concrete with a police’s gun pressed on his cheek. I was hurt that my mother worked relentless hours and couldn’t make ends meet. I was hurt that I couldn’t afford college application fees. I was hurt when I saw empty refrigerators, broken stoves, broke down cars, and empty food stamp books. 

Comparing Milwaukee to New York City, doesn’t elevate Milwaukee in any way.  Comparing the poverty people face in Milwaukee by using stereotypes of New York City compromises the real, valid, and equally as disastrous conditions people face in Milwaukee each and everyday. Milwaukee doesn’t have to be some fantasy oasis in order for us to actually see poor people walking down North Avenue.  I get it: Reading about poverty doesn’t elicit happy thoughts from people. Hearing that your hometown is not Pleasantville, is probably astonishing to people who are oblivious to it. But we can’t continue to be ashamed to name it.  We can’t continue to deny it exists on a sizable scale.  We can’t continue to think that people in Milwaukee are accidentally and only temporarily poor while people in New York City are institutionally and permanently poor. It’s called denial.

How do we move past polarization and comparison? How do shift the conversation past individual responsibility and geographical uniqueness to collective accountability? How can we all meaningfully contribute to a productive conversation (and then action) about addressing poverty if we are disillusion to poverty in our own backyards? 

 I guess we just say it.

This isn’t the Poverty Olympics. Nobody’s city wins by making another look bad. Poverty is just as merciless in well-known cities as well as in historically underrepresented cities like Milwaukee. Don’t be a poverty denier. It’s time we give a voice to the voiceless.

 

Coming from where I'm from...

Sin

milwaukee.jpg


I just returned to what I consider to be home, Brooklyn, after spending just over a week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is where I spent most of my childhood but I haven’t called it home for years.  

Milwaukee is considered to be one of the most segregated cities in America where close to 60% of the residents identify as Black or Latino. Milwaukee, like most other rustbelt, Midwestern, former industrial towns has seen an increase in crime, decrease in jobs, and a political push for urban gentrification that has displaced some of its poorest residents. Milwaukee is where my grandparents migrated after first settling in Chicago from Mississippi during the 1940s to escape the treachery of the south.

It is in Milwaukee though that my fondest memories were not great. Tuetonia and Locust is where I remember playing on the playground before bullets rang out. When I think of Milwaukee, I think of it as the physical place where my brothers failed to escape its destructible trajectory. It is in Milwaukee where I’ve experienced some of my scariest moments.  I remember waking up in the middle of the night to a burning house. It was in Milwaukee where several men beat me as a young woman with bats and the hardiness of the concrete. It was right there in that city, where I slugged on public transportation to get minimum wage just to buy basic necessities. When I think of Milwaukee I think of the food stamps, the hours of waiting for healthcare, the roaches on the wall, the desperate competition for school clothes, the long lines at Aldi, the boys who got shot, the men that went to prison, the girls who became mothers, the babies who were left alone.  It is there, in Milwaukee, where I learned the instant gratification of sex, drugs, and money. It is there where I learned the disillusion of basketball dreams and rapping careers.

It didn’t build my character, as people say poverty does, it built angst, dejection, and posttraumatic stress. It harbored in me, for years after going down south for college, a deep sense of inadequacy and eventually survivor’s guilt. I began to feel guilty that all of my greatest memories-falling in love, meeting lifelong friends, traveling the world, finding amazing mentors, becoming engulfed in life altering projects, getting married, graduating, starting a family-were not in Milwaukee. Even driving, learning to pay bills, becoming independent, discovering how to control my emotions, turning away from a culture of violence, and other basic life changes happened to me away from my family and surely outside of the small city I grew up in. I grew further and further away from the people whom I considered my family and visiting became much more of a chore and far less of a comfort.

Every time I returned to Milwaukee, I was forced to be 15 again. I was forced to remember people I had long forgotten about. I was forced to remember restaurants I could never afford to eat in.  I was forced to remember neighbors who had long gone to prison. I was forced to remember the playground I was beat up at, the goodwill store my mother shopped at, and the welfare line so many of us used to stand in. I was forced to have unnatural conversations with old friends I was disappointed in, who gained so much weight I barely recognized, who lived lives I was unacquainted with.  I was forced to hear old stories that were glossed up as if they were amazing ones. I was forced to remember all the people we never got to see become whole again.

Every time I step in the city limits, it conjures in me an uncertainty, an ambiguity, a deep sorrow that there are people here who I love but who will forever be faint memories.

There are times and people in Milwaukee that continue, and I hope will always bring me great joy. There are friends and family who I continue to speak about with great pride.  I remember buying laffy taffies and Okie Doke popcorn from the corner store on 38th and Meineke. I remember spending summer days at Afro Fest and summer nights sitting on the porches drinking Kool Aid. I remember shopping at Northridge Mall and going to Immature concerts down at the Riverside Theater. I remember as a teen getting all dressed to go to Vincent and King high school basketball games.  I remember, it was in Milwaukee, where my third grade teacher Mr. Smith inspired me to be anything. Milwaukee is where my Girl Scout troop became a place of solace. It is where the youth group became a saving grace. There are memories that are so vivid in my mind of important people in Milwaukee who, surely, without them I would have met the fate of so many of my peers.

Yet moving ‘away’ from Milwaukee as a teenager, was absolutely the best thing I could have ever done for myself. Moving away, going to college several states away, and then graduating with no desire to return to Milwaukee was probably the single most important act of courage I could have ever pulled off. Not because Milwaukee is some God awful place where no good ever comes, but because it was important for me to grow as a person without the weight of familial pressure and the destitute destiny of unemployment, violence, and generational poverty that awaited me on the Northside of Milwaukee.

The High School I graduated from 

The High School I graduated from 

I’ve struggled with telling this story, especially to my family and friends who compare what they consider to be a working class life to our poorer peers who met a much harsher fate. While neither one of my parents were addicted to crack, or died, or let us go nights on the street or without food, I learned that my own traumatic experiences weren’t less worthy to tell. My complaints of memories are seen as trivial and escape is seen as a reflection of some biological desire, divine intervention or intellectual supremacy. But I don’t tell the story of Milwaukee as some heroine’s dream of hard work and perseverance. I know I’m not any more deserving of freedom than my own siblings who did not survive generational poverty’s unquestionable destruction. I know I didn’t ‘work any harder’ or was given any more grace.

I am fully aware that what plagues my family and so many people in Milwaukee is a combination of poor public policy, mass segregation, over incarceration and an even poorer education system. I chose to move away from Milwaukee not the work. I choose to focus my energy and adult working life on public policies where zip code doesn’t dictate destiny, where parental income doesn’t so easily transfer, where schoolhouses can be an oasis of hope.

I left my burden somewhere on the sidewalk cracks of Hadley Street on the north side of Milwaukee just as I would in the torn up rubble of the Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago. I’ll never get Milwaukee tattooed on my chest. I probably will never be able to vacation with my family members in some incredible safari resort in Kenya and many of them will likely never board a plane to see what life is like for their cousin, sister, friend in Brooklyn. And while I continue to mourn that Huxatble dream of going back ‘home’ to a place that is safe, supportive, and where people understand me, I’ve learned that the best I could do is be safe, supportive, and understanding to them.

I learned from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie that: stories matter. I learned that stories empower, humanize and can also repair broken dignity. But, as Ms. Adichie often says, this is just one story. It is just one story of Milwaukee and the memories I bury at the airport each and every time I board my plane back to my home where my friends, job and family await me on the East Coast. I will reminiscence about Milwaukee as my grandparents once did of Mississippi, as a place with much history but with no future for me.


Editors Note: 

When I wrote this piece, I never knew that it would be tweeted, shared, and spread to over 21,000 people in just 48 hours. Not a lot of people knew I spent my childhood in Milwaukee. I've not seen a lot of stories of the intersections of poverty, segregation, and race told by young people from this place. I chose to write just one of those stories. But this story was my story. My story of poverty that goes beyond mere geography. This is my story of a village that was burning. Due to a whole host of political and economic reasons became an unsafe place for me where the outcomes were dim.  This is a story about how children inherit poverty and what that does to the human spirit. This is a story of luck, when it should never be about luck. 

This is not a story of why people should leave Milwaukee.This is not a story advocating for the mass flight of people from Milwaukee or even the 'hood.

I spend my life organizing and advocating for children like me. For children who because of generational poverty became victims of inadequate education and pitiable teaching, aggressive policing, etc. but who by no fault of their own are relegated to second class citizenship. I don’t advocate for escaping the ‘hood with no return. I’m an advocate for the inevitable defeat of poverty-anywhere, for anyone, always. 

The comments are a reflection of the inconsistent experiences people within this city and people who see, experience, and encounter poverty face everyday. Thank you all for your support and be well. 

 

The Rise of Ike Turner

Sin

Ike Turner meme [ I do not own this picture and I do not who does]. 

Ike Turner meme [ I do not own this picture and I do not who does]. 

Culture critics with a sense of humor may be too busy finding solace with common folk to find fault in this new phenomenon that’s sweeping the world of social media. If I have to scroll through my Instagram timeline to see another meme of Ike Turner, I think I’m going to throw up.

Ike Turner personifies domestic violence. Ike Turner enjoyed a confounding mainstream persona years before the now infamous What’s Love Got to Do With It movie shed a light on his troubling marriage to superstar Tina Turner.  What many of us witnessed in that movie amounted to marital rape, choking, slapping, punching, and emotional distress of a Black woman year after year. If someone says they are “going to Ike Turner” you, then they won’t be giving you a hug.

And then, to make matters worse Jay Z spouts in the hook of Drunk in Love:

Catch a charge, I might, beat the box up like Mike…I’m like Ike Turner

Baby know I don’t play, now eat the cake Annie Mae. Said, eat the cake, Annie Mae.

Wait. What? Rewind. Did that just come out of Jay Z’s mouth? International rap extraordinaire, husband to self-proclaimed feminist Beyonce? In a song about pleasure? Confusion.                                                                                                                              

So when did we decide to popularize domestic violence offenders? When did we sanction the misogynic history of such a polarizing figure? When did we forget that patriarchy influences also what we find humor in? When did we start fetishizing one of the most dishonorable violent offenders in pop culture history? I missed that shit.

Surely Ike can be both polarizing and atrocious and simultaneously funny?

Ok I could concede that the memes are actually trying to poke fun at Ike himself and his perceived extreme way of thinking. That’s worthy of a quiet 2-second chuckle to oneself.  But people are doing more than just laughing to them selves. They are reposting. They are commenting. They are spreading this shit like wild fire. And the things these memes say are not quotes that poke fun at Ike. Oh no. These are memes that further objectify women. Some quotes are so outrageous, so controlling that it is unbelievable and thus there is where the humor lies. But many of them are actually playing out in relationships young and old across the country right now.

Once again though we are left with the reminder of the broken Black female body that he abused. This body continues to remain fodder for public humiliation. Instead of containing these pictures to a small, ignorant few of us, this has bled into boardrooms and awkward train station encounters. Why do I have to glimpse at young, Asian teenage boys laughing at an Ike Turner meme on my way to work?  Why does Ike Turner have to be the dominant figure in this joke against aggressive boyfriends anyway? Why does this egregious man have to be the image that starts uncontrollable laughter? Is he a clown? Yes. Do I want to see his stern mug and piercing eyes and mushroomed hair underneath a quote that is trying to get me to lose weight? No. 

And no. I'm not embarrassed on behalf of all Black people around the world because of some pseudo allegiance to respectability politics. I get that Black folk are human and therefore represent the spectrum of human dignity and downfall. This is not some feminine plea for respect. This is simply an honest critique of what we find funny in society and how that too needs to be checked. 

I can laugh without reprising some of the most disdainful people in music. Truly I can. I do it all the time. I laugh when people wear lime green from head to toe, I laugh almost every time I’m in the Midwest and someone thinks NYC is like Timesquare, I laugh when toddlers pass gas, I laugh at Charlamange the God every morning, I laugh at NeNe Leakes when she’s reading someone in the confessional, I laugh at Funkie Dineva when she does a review of R&B Divas. I know how to laugh.

I don’t laugh at Ike Turner. Ike Turner images. Ike Turner references. Or Ike Turner name drops.

So here’s the thing, I’m just not in to domestic violence. I like Jay Z. I like Instagram. I even like to gawk at memes being both appalled and humored. But nothing about domestic violence and controlling men is funny to me. As a child who lived in a family where violence was prevalent and commonplace, I don’t find anything about glorying perpetrators of patriarchal violence humorous.

I’m just asking that we scale back on our creation of infamy of Ike. When his name is being spread across the world on the number one album like he’s done something right, I take issue. It says something about our collective acceptance of our contentment with abuse. It says something about our disturbing inclination to report, share, and laugh at someone who is the exact opposite of funny. It says something about our collective desire to want shit to be funny that we decide it’s funny even when it shouldn’t be. It says something that we take pleasure in someone else’s pain when Ike Turner becomes the new face of funny.

When someone says no...believe them.

Sin

“Why don’t you want to have children?”

You heard it. The answer was no.

She said no sir. Do you know that it is tremendously insulting to continue to berate an adult woman who has said to you on multiple occasions that she has come to the reasonable conclusion that she has decided not to utilize her uterus for the production of human life?  And that shit is fine, well, and good. And it is her very personal decision. Not worthy of conversation, scrutiny, or even comment by the likes of you.

Personally, I like kids. I believe that kids are God’s gift to the world. I haven’t met a baby, I didn’t immediately want to give my entire life too. That’s me. I love children. I find it to be a personal choice. A choice for which I am grateful to have. I know that there are other women, who equally enjoy children or not and choose to not actually give birth to them. I don’t find that odd. I also don’t immediately inquire about some tragic life event that I imagine that must have had. I don't believe this woman to be selfish or self serving. No. I believe in choice. And I believe that a woman should do with her body as she sit fit. I also believe it to be honest and intuitive. You know you best. 

It’s in fact very unsupportive when you continue to tell a woman that she should reconsider. Really sir? At 30 years old. When she has spent 15 years of her life knowing with extreme certainty that she does not want to have children. We are not above learning new things from our fellow citizens, however the next time you hear a woman say “No” to such a personal question, do us all a favor and back down.

 

Good night. 

Beyonce and the politics of Makeup

Sin

Beyonce

Beyonce

Somewhere in the depths of Regular, Illinois there is a plainly spoken person, in a regular ass blazer, with some regular ass jeans and some regular ass shoes, living a totally regular existence….hating on Beyonce.

I’m no Beyonce stan. It’s 6:36PM on Friday, December 13 and I have yet to download her mysterious, surprise, self-titled album. Although my twitter feed and instagram is full of Beyonce pictures and song lyrics, I have not been tempted enough to purchase her album. Yet. Let’s be clear: I think Beyonce is good. I love to run to her music on the treadmill and I know the words to “Single Ladies” like every good American. I remember vividly standing on the street corner of Union Square in Manhattan watching Beyonce exit a Black SUV just 10 feet away from me on a warm, summer night two years ago. She looked like a jar of smooth peanut butter. I literally wanted to leap over and bite her leg; she was beautiful.

As I begin to scroll through these social media memes, I am reminded of how ugly people can be when we begin to talk about beauty and Beyonce.

After scrolling through a friends' twitter picture discussing their over joy for her physicality someone commented, “ I wonder how she would look without all that makeup? I wish artists could look more like Aaliyah. #natural beauty”

While I used to believe that there was too much hype around Beyonce’s beauty, I have to admit: There are some Beyonce haters out there.

Does beauty lack intersectionality? How do you know so matter-of-factly that you’ve never seen Beyonce without makeup? And what non-makeup face are you waiting to fawn over as approved by the hormone Gods?  And what makes you think Aaliyah's no-makeup makeup look required less hours of application than a full faced Grammy Awards show attending Beyonce? How petty and nuanced are you actually about to be about her highlighting and contouring job before you realize you've just waisted 10 minutes of your life looking at her real-life cheek bones? Hashtag No Makeup. 

As a beauty junkie and makeup nerd, this obviously struck a chord with me, as I’ve too heard people say things like this to me. Why is my makeup making you feel like I cheated in some competition of beauty? Get it together.

There’s the perception that some people have that ‘beauty’ has a purity to it that requires one to appear to be makeup less, weave less, filter less, etc. I could break your heart and tell you how much makeup your favorite natural artist actually has on but makeup shaming is not my thing. You can have your dreams. Hashtag Natural Beauty.

"I woke up like this. We flawless."-Beyonce. 

So you want to see what exactly? And who decides what is ‘natural enough’? Would you like to see Beyonce without her eyebrows waxed or without a relaxer? Would you like to see Beyonce before her vegan diet? Would you like to see Beyonce before she tans or without fake lashes or without whatever alteration to her physical appearance you think she’s had that has tricked the general public into thinking she is beautiful?

Let’s face it: You are a hater. 

Not because you shouldn’t be validly concerned about the media’s continual display of their ideas of perfection and billion dollar cosmetics companies profiting from our own insecurities. Not because you shouldn’t be validly concerned about what that message, and Beyonce’s unknowing role in that message, sends to our daughters about their natural appearances. Not that you shouldn’t be concerned about the over emphasis on women’s physical appearance as a measure of their success, because you should. Not that you shouldn’t be concerned about what message the over emphasis on Beyonce’s complexion or waist size or eye shape or cheek bones sends to young women and girls who don’t share her looks. You should. Not that you shouldn’t be concerned about the binary that we continue to create with Beyonce’s type of beauty and those whose nose isn’t as slender as hers is, because you should.

I have a feeling this isn’t what this is. This is another attempt at people trying to once again tell women how they can and can not be beautiful.

How did we get into this rabbit hole of judging women’s beauty based off of their ability to apply makeup or not? Many women that I encounter who have an unhealthy disdain for other women who wear makeup, tend to be women who are trying to figure out how to apply it correctly. I’ve also found that some men who have a disdain for makeup tend to want to control the appearance of women in their lives. I’ve also heard people judge women’s makeup based on how much they can tell they are wearing makeup. Because in their homophobic minds, the more makeup you wear the closer to a trans woman you are, which for them is the ultimate form of trickery. I’ve also found that many women who have an unhealthy disdain, not just a mild criticism, to other women who wear makeup tend to lack the ability to recognize when others are actually wearing makeup and when they are not.

I love makeup. In the way that I love scrapbooking and writing. It is a creative outlet. It is a pastime for me that I’m not necessarily an expert at but I do well enough that some people take notice. I could spend any given day in what a real regular person would consider “a lot of makeup.” Some people are so used to seeing me with foundation on that when they see me without foundation, they don’t know.  I’ve received compliments in both occasions. I’ve felt equally uncomfortable and comfortable with and without makeup but I always feel like my beautiful self.

There is one place I can think of, where I have never worn makeup: the braid shop. I get my hair braided pretty regularly and one day I was showing a picture of myself and my stylist said, “Did you do your makeup in this picture? I didn’t know you wear makeup. You don’t strike me as someone who wears makeup.” Me? Anyone who knows me, would be shocked to hear anyone say that about me.

I don’t believe Beyonce or women like her who wear makeup are hiding under a mask of insecurity.

And we can talk about what dictates beautiful in this society-which is an equally valid concern. But it’s makeup not magic. You should stop following these makeup artists on Instagram because you are clearly carried away by what you think non-theatrical makeup can do.

Just know this:

Beyonce with no makeup

Beyonce with no makeup

Stop trying to dismiss Beyonce's beauty or anyone elses.

She can dip her face in blue paint and any reasonable person who subscribes to that standard of beauty would say she is beautiful.

She can wipe off the makeup and does. At the end of the day that is her bone structure. And you can’t change that. You are giving makeup too much credit for Beyonce’s beauty.