It sounds like a lot of words, black African intersectional feminist, but all these words, in this order are necessary. And, yes, I fully recognise how problematic and limiting labels can be, but this is one label I wear with pride. It lets others know that my every day a feminist life recognises that our social, biological, economic and geographical categorisations, such as race, gender, class, ability, and sexual orientation interact on multiple and simultaneous levels and contribute to systematic injustice and social inequality (Side note 3: Here I am relying on definitions provided by a long line of black intersectional feminists but mainly Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins). This label is a warning sign to others that my every day a feminist life resists any and all forms of social justice work that seeks only to address a single form of discrimination or oppression. (Side note 4: This is one example of how I would answer, “what does my every day a feminist life mean for others?”) Most importantly, because this is often overlooked, the label black African intersectional feminist is in direct response to all those who seek to label feminism as un-African. As my mother said, feminism “was not imposed on us [Africans] by the United Nations or by Western feminists, but has an independent history.” That is why this label is necessary – long as it is – it is an abbreviation for the theoretical underpinnings of my feminism and if black African intersectional feminist is the theory then every day a feminist is the practice.

I use the term “every day a feminist” to convey the unbroken and consistent existence of my feminism. (Side note 5: I purposely use “every day” as opposed to “everyday” because there is nothing commonplace or normal about the feminism I practice. Its very existence is to challenge the norm.) It is who I am, it is who I have always been, it is what I do, it is what I have always done, it is what I believe, it is what I have always believed. As Lola Okolosie says of her own identity as a black feminist, the naming happened after the fact. Perhaps this is why my initial reaction was to describe it as exhausting, because 30 something years, every day a feminist can get tiring but it is also something I enjoy. I particularly enjoy the interaction, love and support present within intersectional feminists spaces so yes maybe it is nice too. Both of these words, I guess are ok when it comes to describing this every day a feminist life, but I still think they are not enough. Between nice and exhausting (if this was a spectrum – which I don’t think it is) there is a whole lot more. “Nice” and “exhausting” speak to moments, instances that occur as part of my every day a feminist journey. In thinking of every day a feminist as a lived experience, that has a past, present and future I much prefer Nyaboe Makiya’s conceptualization of feminism as survival. The label is black African intersectional feminist, every day a feminist is how I live this label and I live every day a feminist as an act of survival.

I first came to live in England in 1982 and as a young child the racism I experienced was so unbearable that I would tell my parents I wanted to go back to Kenya because England didn’t like me. Then finally returning to Kenya in 1986 only for my father to be detained without trial by the Kenyan Government. Four years later being back in the UK, this time as asylum seekers/refugees because clearly Kenya didn’t like me either. And we all know how the UK feels about immigrants. This time we lived in a council estate and I attended a failing inner city London school. It was the early 1990s, surrounded by people who looked like me, but just like when I was in Kenya I learned that this was not enough. Other black students would “joke” that I came from Africa on an elephant. A careers advisor, a black woman, told me instead of working towards law school I should, at the end of my GCSEs, consider employment at a supermarket. My good grades be damned because apparently something about me rendered a university education unattainable. Finally attending university and realising that race was not a part of the law curriculum; gender however, was and I was encouraged to think about how the law (according to white feminists) affected me as a woman, because this was apparently the only identity that mattered. Later in life, working in development with white men who insist they cannot be racist because they are helping poor people in Africa. While out at a bar in Lancaster with my siblings a random white woman approaches us and without invitation, conversation or approval on our part takes out her camera and starts to take pictures of us. I confronted her, her response “I thought you were famous”. The list goes on. Initially I couldn’t articulate how I felt about these instances because I was too young. Later on, while at university I would stumble on the works of Collins, Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela P. Harris (to name a few) and it all made sense. I understood now why my parents had insisted I only play with black dolls and why my at home reading consisted of nothing but writers of colour. I thought that every time they had stood in and stood up for me was simply because they were my parents. I understood now that while it was of course motivated by parental love, it was a love rooted in black African intersectional feminism. How could I as an adult reject the practice that had helped me survive? I didn’t know any other way to navigate this world, I still don’t know any other way to do so and even if I did I wouldn’t choose any other way.

I am an every day a feminist because that is how I am able to survive, but black African intersectional feminism reminds me that it is not enough for me to survive; others have to survive too and my every day a feminist life calls on me to  (1) support others so that they can survive and (2) make sure that I am not complicit in the un-survivability of others. This is perhaps the most important answer to the question “what does my every day a feminist life mean for others?” In recognizing the intersectionality of identities and systems of oppressions, I am also acknowledging that I can be both a victim and beneficiary of these power structures. Being an every day feminist means that I too, as a western living/educated, middle class heterosexual cis-gendered and able-bodied person, must check my privilege. My every day a feminist approach makes me suspicious of forms of feminism that are not intersectional. My every day feminist stance is unforgiving of human rights artivism that relies on misogyny. My every day feminist life has no patience for “wait your turn” anti-oppression work that deems the struggles of LGTBQI people as not important right now.  White tears will never dampen my every day a feminist life. For those that come at me with “not all white people” and/or “not all men” my every day a feminist voice will yell back “Shut up your face!” And by now, people really should know the answer to the question “why is everything about patriarchy?” but for those who wonder, every day a feminist means every thing through feminism. Honestly though, I am too busy living this every day a feminist life to educate those who continually un-hear the voices of other intersectional feminists.

I was before; I am now and always will be a black African intersectional feminist. I live every day a feminist because the alternatives make my life and the lives of so many other people un-liveable. Every day a feminist, unapologetically.

“new racism that entails individuals saying and doing things that perpetuate racial stereotypes and inequalities, but they do so in such a way that the offender is able to deny being explicitly racist.”

The definition emphasises the privilege of deniability that coded racism bestows on the offender, however it does not fully articulate the impact coded-racism has on the “victim” of racism.  The ambiguity present in coded-racism that allows an offender to deny their wrong doing is the same ambiguity that makes it difficult for those on the receiving end to actually call out well-disguised racism.  Feeling uncertain about whether something/someone is racist, or if someone is using code words, and if so how to address it, is an uncomfortable and lonely place to be.  Yet that is exactly where I find myself every time I watch another Thug Notes video.

Thug Notes Trailer

On the surface of it, the premise of the channel and its videos is very simple.  Each video features, a male African American literary scholar, Sweet Sparky, PhD who provides a summary and analysis of a popular English literature text; a  Cliff Notes for the digital age. However just like any classic work of literature one cannot ignore Thug Note’s subtext; and it is this subtext that I suspect is the cause of my unease.

Despite Sweet Sparky being the only person you see and hear in each video, Napkin Note Productions, a company that aims to create films that “tickle your brain and warm your heart”, are responsible for Thug Notes.  Sweet Sparky is played by actor-turned-comedian Greg Edwards who is supported behind the scenes by a crew that includes Napkin Note founder Jared Bauer (credited as Show Creator, Writer and Executive Producer). The rationale for the project is that, “if education was funny, more kids would want to learn.”  Through this project Napkin Note want to “deliver intelligent summary and analysis of classical literature” and “… to spread the gospel of literature.”  Clearly a significant amount of thought has gone into the creation and execution of this project and while not wanting to take anything away from this, I’m still left with some lingering questions regarding Thug Notes.

For instance were the creators aware of the on-going debate surrounding the use of the word Thug as a racially coded-word? Whilst I am not 100% certain that “Thug” is the new N Word and thus should be considered off-limits; I am of the opinion that some words cannot be understood without exploring their contextual basis.  In trying to establish context within Thug Notes, both as a project and as a YouTube channel, I was immediately drawn to its tagline; “Classic Literature, Original Gangster”.   The phrase “Original Gangster” often abbreviated to ‘OG’ has its roots in late ‘80s, early 90s Hip-Hop.  Thus my inference is that Thug Notes use of the word “thug” is in some way related to hip-hop’s use of the word; a word that the late rapper Tupac Shakur passionately defined as:

When I say ‘Thug Life,’ I mean that shit. Cause these white folks see us as thugs. I don’t care what y’all think I don’t care if you think you a lawyer, if you a man, if you an ‘African-American’. If you whatever the f*ck you think you are. We thugs and n*gg@s to these motherf*ckers… (Transcript via Political BlindSpot)

I think one of the reasons I am uncomfortable with “thug” in the context of Thug Notes and its tagline is that one could very easily replace “lawyer” in Tupac’s statement with “English literary scholar” and the meaning of Tupac’s explanation would remain the same.   At the very least, what is apparent to me is that there is a degree of racist stereotyping that I am certainly not at ease with and none of this is made better by the visuals that accompany Thug Notes.

Sweet Sparky addresses his viewers from what may just as well be Jane Austen’s reading room.  Hardback books fill the shelves behind his period drama style armchair, a decanter of some brown, presumably alcoholic, liquid rests on the side table to his right; and then there is the man himself. More specifically his clothing; a do-rag on his head; an oversize gold chain hanging from his neck, a sleeveless shirt exposing muscular arms,  and bare-legs sitting in lace-less high-top  shoes.  Irrespective of the creators’ intention the visual presented by Thug Notes creates a juxtaposition that perpetuates racist stereotyping i.e. the modern day black brute in an environment that one does not expect to find him in.   It relies on long-standing falsehoods that have positioned black people as intellectually inferior; forgoing the library in order to live the gangster life.  If this is supposed to elicit some sort of “oh, that’s clever!” reaction from the viewer; it had the opposite effect on me.  I wasn’t pleasantly surprised.  I wasn’t surprised.  I felt the same old “hmm…I don’t know…” feeling that so often accompanies instances of coded-racism.

As if Sweet Sparky’s appearance is not enough, how he speaks is designed to reinforce his status as an Original Gangster.  Sentences are punctuated with ‘Na’mean?’ (You know what I mean?), and the occasional ‘bitch’ is thrown in for good measure.  If I were being generous I would say Thug Notes is Rap  Genius’ distant cousin; in that Rap-Genius interprets rap music in to English literature style “prose” and Thug Notes interprets English literature into rap style speak.  In this limited definition both do an excellent job. The meaning is not lost and there is knowledge to be gained.  However, I cannot watch Thug Notes without being reminded of the example bell hooks gave in her book, ‘We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity‘ of a

“middle-class black who had never spoken broken English or a black patois was being forced to assume a “ghetto rap” that signified to his co-workers that he was really black.”

I don’t know Sweet Sparky’s back story but what I do know is that the Napkin Note team decided that best way to make learning funny was through the performance of blackness that relies on stereotypes of black male intellect and masculinity.  Thug Notes explicit purpose may be beneficial and Napkin Notes ‘explicit intentions may be benign and from a social media numbers game perspective, with over 130,600 YouTube subscribers, 10,000 Facebook fans and 3,900+ Twitter followers, it is a success.  However, for me, I still cannot shake away that feeling of unease and discomfort that I get whenever I find myself confronted with coded-racism.

It has been a long while since I considered myself a blogger.  So long in fact that even the claim to being a ‘sometimes blogger’ has started to wear thin.  So, forgive me if I am a little rusty.  A lot has happened in the time between my regular blogging and now. To name a few big changes: I got married, co-founded an ICT4D social enterprise and more recently I have returned to study.

These changes undoubtedly affect a person’s perception and opinions and one’s articulation of the same.  And to add to this, I firmly believe that being a blogger is not just defined by what you write but by your interaction with other blogs and bloggers.  To be a true blogger, one, I believe, has to be both a reader of and a writer of blogs. And boy hasn’t blogging come a long way since those early days?

As I read through old posts, they sound slightly different and I question if that voice, way back in 2005 was “really me” and as I began to formulate new posts I was conscious that perhaps my new posts which reflect the changes I have  been through, when read alongside my old posts may not sound “like me”.  I also thought about the changing blogsphere in particular the Kenyan blogsphere and wondered if I my voice would fit in to this new place.

Then I was reminded of an article by Professor Angela P. Harris on race and gender essentialism that I read as an undergraduate; an article which is, for good reason, one of the most cited law review articles of all time.   Harris challenges the idea that individuals speak with one unified voice; instead she suggests, that we all speak with a “welter of partial, sometimes contradictory, or even antithetical” voices.  She refers to this as “multiple consciousness” and states that this consciousness is not a “final outcome…but a process”.  So as I begin my return to blogging I am comforted by the fact that all my posts, both old and new are still a reflection of who I am; an insight into my  “multiple consciousness”.  My blog is “home to both the  first  and  the  second voices,  and  all  the  voices  in  between.”

So this is it…a brief sound check …as I get ready for my return to blogging…

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Image Source:  p_a_h via Flickr – reproduced under Creative Commons license