The Clemson CRIPmas Party: a response from a Pro-Black Girl alum.

In case you don’t watch CNN or FOX News, my dear old alma mater is in trouble, its students accused of throwing racially insensitive holiday parties. No, I'm not talking about the Blackface Party Fiasco of 2007. I’m talking about CRIPmas 2014, otherwise known as Clemson’s second major (reported) racial incident in less than 10 years. Sigma Alpha Epsilon, an SAE fraternity, threw their annual “CRIPmas Party”, where frat members and sundry sororities get together in their best Gangsta Themed clothes, sing along to Biggie Smalls albums, and play beer pong. Or, you know, whatever it is that they do at those types of frat parties. I never went to any because you don’t always have to bite the donut to know that it’s sweet.

Or, in this case, you don’t have to go to the party to know that you really don’t belong there. I'm not a party girl in general, but racist frat functions definitely aren't my cup of tea. These good ol’ Clemson kids certainly seem to like them though. After all, it’s an annual CRIPmas Party. And then there was the aforementioned Blackface Party Fiasco of 2007. And all those lovely Yik Yak posts about the Die-In protests last week. You know which ones I’m talking about. “Stay safe, blacks are attacking whites nation wide.” Whites a minority?! Haha. We’ll always been the superiority.” “Clemson used to be a plantation with slaves. Atleast be happy we gave u freedom[.]”

Nothing will show the character of an entire geographical region like anonymous social mobile apps, amirite? Thanks, Yik Yak!!

And what does Jim Clements, Clemson’s newish president, do in the face of this ignorance and poor grammar/syntax? He writes a little letter and puts it on the school website, wherein he basically says, “Guys, this is bad, okay? But y’all need to calm down about Ferguson. And Eric Garner. Let’s not get violent here.” I would say I’m disappointed, but I knew that blame-shift was coming. ...nah, I’m still disappointed. He started out so well! And begging your pardon, Jimbo, but disenfranchised white boys upset that they couldn't play ultimate frisbee on Bowman because of die-in protesters drew first blood with, “Damnet do I have to put a sheet on and go scare the people in front of Tillman away[?]” That sounds like violence to me. Did y'all know that intimidation is a crime punishable by up to 30 days in prison under the South Carolina Code of Law? Because it is!

I’m going to be real with y’all, if that’s alright. Is anyone really surprised that this happened? Because I’m not. Clemson has been wiggling its way out of messy hate crime allegations for a long, long time. They’re old pros at this by now. Same shtick, different day. Tomato. To-mah-tah. To-mah-to?

“Now Lyssa,” you may be saying, “dressing up and having a party is not a hate crime. You might be offended, but it’s not a hate crime,” to which I say, isn’t it? This CRIPmas Party is basically a form of Black minstrelsy. You know what Black minstrelsy is? It’s a type of “performance art” used by white people to mock and otherwise demean Black people and Black culture. The most common form of this is what we know as blackface, and I think that mostly* everyone agrees that that’s bad. It’s psychologically damaging, promotes negative stereotypes of the Black community, and bolsters beliefs of white superiority. In short, Black minstrelsy is a racialized form of violence, and do you know what racially based violence is? That’s right, my friend. That’s a hate crime.

“Lyssa,” you may now be saying, “no one was actually in blackface!” To this I say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you were thinking of white people every time you heard the word Crip/Blood/Folk. My mistake. Do carry on with your day.”

Sip on that tea for a minute. Or, if you need something stronger, keep reading.

I’ll be fair. It’s not just the SAE, IFC, and NPC men and women running around campus with their TuPac t-shirts and fake butts in miniskirts and brown face paint, though they’re the best hands down at getting caught. Bravo, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Alpha Phi, and all other Greek-lettered individuals who actually participated in this disgusting display on being a disgrace to all of us Greeks and on being so spectacularly mediocre. But this is not your burden alone. I had plenty of self-proclaimed liberal, GDI white friends in college who voted for Obama in 2008 and were also low-key racist and full of microaggressions. My homeboy that “wasn’t attracted to Black girls” (a problematic statement in and of itself, but we won't talk about that today) had an undeniable crush on one of my few Black girl friends that he denied every chance he got. Another guy I knew didn’t see a problem at all with The Blackface Party Fiasco of 2007, because, you know, “people dress up as rich old white guys all the time.” He was on student council. I used to see my friend’s parents, Clemson alums themselves, on campus at sporting events I attended with him; they were very nice, but later my friend would chuckle as he told me how his dad had asked him, “You’re not dating That Black Girl, are you?” after I left. I knew 2 guys who made jokes about Black people being on tv because it was MLK Day. One told me I was “being too sensitive” when I called him on it the next day (a staple retort learned in Racism 101), yet still thought he was better than his sister who thought that “only a fully white person should be president.” An RA from another floor once talked to my RA and some others about a white girl she knew that went by “Gel” instead of Angelica. “Are you sure she wasn’t Black?” because that’s an easy thing to mix up, and then, “Shh! A Black girl lives right there!” They were standing outside my door. There was also the staff who never went forward when I reported being called “the dark one” and other racist names by my friends’ RA who couldn’t seem to decide if he hated my Black guts or wanted to notch his belt with me, and then just decided to multitask. My friends thought he was funny. One friend who met my family later only seemed to remember how, “It’s so funny how all of you say ‘Mmmhmmm chil'!’" And those are just the ones I care to make examples of right now. There are plenty more.

You want names? Come talk to me. I’ll give them to you. I keep my receipts.

Like I said. This isn't just a Greek Life problem. It is fundamentally a Clemson University problem because these people were RAs, student council members, student organization leaders, and athletes. This whole “One Clemson” family thing is a lie. There is Black Clemson, and White Clemson, and Sri Lankan Clemson, and Korean Clemson; White Greek Clemson, Black Greek Clemson, Service Frat Clemson, and a lot of other Clemsons, plus a few brave souls who dare cross the lines outside of class. Let us not forgot that Clemson doesn’t have the greatest history with race relations in general, no matter how hard they push Harvey Gantt in our faces. Talk to your elders from the area and see what they tell you. Read a book. Google it. Remember: Clemson was founded on plantation land by a plantation owner’s son-in-law who was so influenced by Benjamin Tillman--a US Senator that did some cool stuff for agriculture, I guess, but who was directly responsible for a lot of white supremacist legislature and a vocal proponent of Lynch Laws and Jim Crow--that he made him a chairman of the (then) college and named the clock tower after him. You know the clock tower. It's that pretty red brick building you see on all the commercials and postcards and paintings.

Do you see what I’m saying? Respect for Black students isn’t in Clemson’s culture. It wasn’t there from the very beginning, and many of the non-Black students that the school attracts act accordingly. This bigotry was put in between the brick and mortar of Tillman Hall itself. It is a vicious cycle of hate and iniquity that dies with every graduation ceremony and is reborn with each incoming freshman class. Jim Clements thinks that Clemson is “better than this,” but is it? Is it really? Because this seems to keep happening, and it’s not those same kids from 2007 that are making it so.

Here's some more realness for you. I’m both a pro-Black girl and pro-Black girl. This does not mean that I am anti-non-Black, anti-white, anti-Black man, etc. It means, in the words of  Malcolm X, that I am Black first. My sympathies are Black, my allegiances are Black, my whole objectives are Black. I’ve been a pro-Black girl so hard and for so long that in high school when I asked for college recommendations my French teacher wrote that I was “dedicated to disproving stereotypes.” I’m so staunchly pro-Black that when I studied abroad one of my professors approached me about helping him teach a two-part seminar on Black History in the United States (and I did). It is because I am a pro-Black girl that I cannot like Clemson University, much less love it. How dare I love a place that hates me, and still claim to love myself? The short answer is that I can’t. The long answer is this:

I do not want to sing your football chants, I do not want to rub your rock, I do not want to go to your alumni parties (will there be blackface there too?), I do not want to wear orange on Fridays. It makes me physically ill to set foot in that godforsaken hill country where the Blue Ridge yawns “I’m racist!” Let me be plain: I hate that place as much as I love myself and my people. It’s not a safe, healthy, or good environment for our Black and brown children to enter into, and honestly I mistrust any Black or brown person that likes the orange and purple too much. That means I give a lot of side-eye at a lot of people I love. I give it to some of my former classmates, to my friends, my sorors, my old professors, my uncles, to anyone with a paw print or orange flags flying on their car. I pity their babies with their big purple bows and little orange overalls and their cheerleader outfits at tailgates. My Black children, who will be Black to this country regardless as to whether or not their other parent is Black, white, Thai, Montenegrin, or Indigenous Australian, will not be Clemson alums, so help me God. I will not take them on walks around Bowman Field, or to 55 Exchange for ice cream; they will not come with me to homecoming because I will not be going. Not when it is my job to protect them. Not if I don’t want them to look back on their college years like I do: with bitterness and hate and regret.

Some time this week, I am finding out who to call to get my name off of the alumni donation solicitations list and I’m calling them. I’ll even ask them nicely to take me off. I only ever throw that stuff in the trash anyway.

If Clemson doesn’t want to respect or value my Black personhood, they sure as hell don’t deserve my Black money.

Obligatory election day post is obligatory!

By now, if we’re friends on Facebook and you pay attention to my updates (which you have to, or else you wouldn’t know about this blog!), you’ve noticed that I changed my profile picture. If you follow me on tumblr, you’ll notice that I posted the same picture there. Let me tell you, I didn’t realize how badly my eyebrows needed shaping until I started photographing myself. Why did no one tell me this? We are not friends. But that’s not the point. This is the point:

IT’S ELECTION DAY, SNITCHES!

That means that I woke up this morning, put on some clothes, and went to the polls! The line at my polling place was in the parking lot when I got there (at 10:30!) but it only took an hour for me to finish. It was kinda sorta a lot cold, but I was standing next to nice people in line and that made it go a little bit faster. I checked my ballot like three times to make sure my selections didn’t mysteriously get changed, I got my sticker and I’m happy. The end.

But not really because I hope you all (my US friends of legal adult age, anyhow) voted too! I don’t care who you voted for (that’s a lie; yes I do, but for the sake of an argument…) !  I just hope you voted! A vote for no one is a vote for the enemy, whoever your enemy is! Do your civic duty! Other inspirational quotes! Yeah!

And if you’re a brown person/general person-of-color of voting age and you didn’t vote for reasons other than you’re dying, in labor, in areas affected by the storm (victims in NY can vote ANYWHERE IN THE STATE, by the way), or unconscious, don’t let me find out about it. Because I will hurt you. For those of you confused at home going, “Lyssa, why would you want to hurt people that don’t vote?” I honestly don’t have enough time left in my life to explain to you why brown folks that don’t cast a ballot need their behinds beat. It would seriously take me that long.

All people of color should vote every opportunity they get. We need to be voting for homecoming queen at high schools we don’t even go to. It’s that crucial.

I don’t really have anything deep or mind-blowing to say today. (But when do I ever?) In the words of my pastor, “I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will tell you to vote for your best interest.” I know who I voted for (and if you know me, you know who I voted for too), and I know I hope y’all know who you’re voting for too, regardless of who it is (okay, that’s the second time I’ve told that lie in this post SORRY I’M NOT SORRY). Hopefully at the end of the night I won’t be deciding where to immigrate. (Y’all think I’m joking. Ask around. I’ve been saying for weeks that if a particular candidate wins, I’m leaving the country. It’s all a matter of deciding where I’m going to go.)

Get out and vote, y’all! I did!

Binders Full of Women, or Reasons I Want Workplace Equality that Don't Pertain to Kids

I’m sure all of you guys watched the debate last week. Really I know you did, because I’m friends with y’all on Facebook and I follow you on twitter and if you’re cool enough I follow you on Tumblr too, and all my dashboards/TLs/newsfeeds were blowing up with Obama/Romney foolishness. I guess I should get on the socially conscious/responsible citizen bandwagon and talk about the election at least once before, you know, the election, so today we’re going to talk about one of the hot topics from last week’s throw down before it gets replaced by hot topics from tonight’s throw down.

You guessed it. Binders full of women.

I’m just kidding. It is way too late for me to get in on the Binders Full of Women joke so I’m not even gonna try. All I’m going to say is that there had to be a better way to say what he was trying to say, and I’m gonna leave it alone. I am, however, going to go in on something else dear old Mittens said that got on my nerves.

I do not need flexibility and fairness at my place of work because I need to go home and cook for my kids.

I am barely 23 years old. I just graduated college. I’m in grad school. I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t have a fiancé, I’m not already married, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that I will not be taking that plunge anytime soon. I also don’t have any kids. Shocking, I know, considering 28.6% of young women in my age group had kids in South Carolina last year, but if you know me that’s not shocking at all. I don’t want kids. It’s not a secret. I do not want children, and though that may change later on, right now I am 23 and ain’t nobody got time for that. Don’t come around here talking about some, “Ooh, we’d make a pretty baby!” because I’m probably going to punch you in the jaw. Who did that line work for, exactly? I might punch her too.

Don’t laugh. I know people who have had that line thrown at them. That was not a joke.

What is a joke to me is that out of all the non-work related activities you could reasonably come up with for an example of why a woman might need time off, the first thing that pops into your head is kids.

I do not need flexibility at my place of work because I have kids.

I need flexibility and fairness at my place of work because I have a life. You know, that whole work/life balance thing? I’m not trying to be a workaholic and have ulcers by 35. That is not fun. That is not cute. Maybe I need to dip out a little early one day because I’m doing something with Zeta.  Maybe I start playing golf and need you to understand that I’m taking a day because I have an 11 o’clock tee time. Maybe I have bills to pay around town. Maybe I have to scoot down to an embassy in Atlanta to get a visa. Maybe I’m not staying late for once because my friend is in town from California and we have plans. Maybe life just happened and I need to go! Stuff happens! Stuff happens to women! Stuff happens to women who don’t have kids! Fancy that!

And that 72¢ to every $1 a man makes that was referenced during the debate? That is a white woman’s 72¢ to ever $1 a white man makes, and actually that number is a little low. As of 2010, white women make 80 for every $1 a white man makes, while I’m looking at 69¢ on that same dollar. I don’t know if you’ve checked out vending machines lately, but 69¢ can’t even get you a honey bun.

I am not shelling out for degrees to make 69¢ on the $1, booboo. That is not the plan. I cannot live on 69¢ to the dollar. Do you know why I can’t live on 69¢ to the dollar? I can give you a whole list.

I have student loans. I’d like to have the option of saving some of my money. I like expensive cars. I like nice houses. I want a Birkin bag. I think shoes with red bottoms and French names are pretty. I like shiny new toys like tablets and video games and digital cameras. I prefer to eat good food. Foreign cheeses are tasty. I like to take vacations, and when I take those vacations I like for them to be on an island in the Aegean Sea. Have you seen the USD/euro conversion rate lately? 69¢ is not going to work with that, and damn it Black hair care is EXPENSIVE.

Am I making sense? Yes, a lot of those reasons are superficial, but money is superficial, and I’m spending a lot of it right now to make myself competitive so that I can get some more (it’s a vicious cycle)! 69¢ on the dollar is not competitive! This is not acceptable!  One of these days I’ll actually move out and have bills and I’d like to have some cash left over after I pay them! WHO’S GOING TO BUY MY LOUIS BAGS IF NOT ME?!

I guess I’ll just go get myself a husband and spend his money. Obviously though I’m going to have to marry a white man*, because that’s about the only way getting married for financial gain is going to work. Asian men seemed to have discovered some way to actually earn more than white men ($1.10 to $1) so kudos to y’all (also, holla at me), but no one else has been so fortunate. Black men earn 74¢ on the dollar, which is just barely better than 69¢, and Latinos…that number is so sad I’m not even going to write it down. If I don’t write it down, it’s not true. I write it down, all hope dies.

The struggle is 69¢ worth of real.

*I sincerely hope y’all know I’m kidding. If I marry a white man, black man, polka dotted man, or green man it will not be because of how much money he makes (even if it is leaps and bounds over me). My mama did not raise me like that. It’s a joke. Laugh!