Cardyn Brooks's Blog, page 40

Using What You've Got

Confession: In the time before e-readers, I've read cookbooks as if they were short story collections because the library didn't have exactly what I was craving for my next prose gorge, there wasn't money in the budget for a book splurge, and reading chocolate recipes satisfied two of my joneses at once.

BATAF: Being thin is always a sign of self-control.

Fixated

Image copyright 2013 Banks Art Partners. All rights reserved.


Confession: More than one saucepan has been charred into early retirement when I've decided to read "just one more page" while waiting for water to boil.

BATAF: Domestic labor is an inherently feminine proclivity.

Make 'Em Laugh

Image from eurweb.com


Confession: Moms Mabley, Whoopi Goldberg, Issa Rae, W. Kamau Bell, and Gary Owens inspire me with their funny ways of telling uncomfortable truths while they entertain. Their brilliance spotlights humanity's resilience.

BATAF: Oppression harms only the oppressed.

Frequency of Disdain

Scott-Lincoln commemorative coin image from thedredscottfoundation.org


Confession: Every time someone publicly spews racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, ageist, Lookist, homophobic, Classist, xenophobic tripe as justification for the dehumanizing treatment of others, Dred Scott comes to mind. It makes me wonder: What would happen if every reference to man/men in the U. S. Constitution were changed to human being/s?

BATAF: Some human beings are less valuable than others. 

Color-Blind

Confession: People who haven't been medically diagnosed as color-blind, but claim not to see skin color make me suspect that they're willfully, culturally blind to the ways in which skin color still impacts individuals and groups in major ways in the 21st century.

     Color-blindness isn't the ultimate virtue; seeing skin color and not making assumptions or taking action based solely upon skin color is.

BATAF: All non-Caucasian people wish they were Caucasian.

Mainstreaming Multiculturalism

Image copyright and brand registered trademark by General Mills


Confession: Reading mainstream adult contemporary fiction set in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. or anywhere in the 21st-century U.S. that doesn't include any Black people or includes them only as caricatures that scream, "Stereotypes! This author doesn't really know any Black people," sucks the joy out of the reading experience for me.

BATAF: Political Correctness is something new.
What was lynching, other than a violent backlash against Black people whose words and actions had been judged politically incorrect by self-appointed enforcers of entrenched racial boundaries?

Burden of Proof

Image by Jon Sullivan from public-domain-photos.com


Confession: The optimistic part of me believed that the jury for the Trayvon Martin trial would return a verdict of manslaughter, at least. The rest of me feared that the grown man who had deputized himself, armed himself (in direct violation of Neighborhood Watch rules) with the intent of finding a confrontation--or creating one--would be found not guilty for projecting his negative, racist assumptions onto the first younger, leaner, unarmed Black solitary target who crossed his path. Trayvon Martin's killer visually tagged him, followed him from within his vehicle, stalked him on foot, then executed him.

In the 21st century it's still open season on Black bodies.

BATAF: Black people are the least valuable humans; entitled to less protection under the law sometimes than animals.

Word Bomb

Image copyright 2013 Banks Art Partners


Confession: Use of the f-word outside of referring to sexual intercourse or expressing extreme anger, fear or pain makes an unpleasant reading experience for me. It's jarring and distracting when used copiously as every part of speech in a character's vocabulary.

BATAF: Frequent use of the f-word conveys intensity and edge--not just a limited and primitive vocabulary.

Readers in a Barrel

Image copyright 2013 Banks Art Partners



Confession: Whenever traditional publishers bemoan the shrinkage in their market share and profits, it makes me wonder why they're not cultivating new and future clientele by partnering with public school systems to make sure every student is literate. Making universal literacy and Internet access their goals supports the whole 70% retail consumer-driven economy, not just publishing, by increasing I.Q.'s, intellectual curiosity, ingenuity, academic engagement, professional aspirations, and earning power for the masses; the laborers in the workplace who become the consumers in the marketplace. (There's a reason luxe brands keep partnering with Target: It's mathematically impossible for the wealthiest 2% to buy every product offered for sale.)

     Some traditional publishers' reactionary solution of charging multiple times the hardcover list price for sales of e-editions sold to libraries ignores the fact that library budgets are strapped and rapidly shrinking. The exorbitant markup on e-editions means most libraries will buy fewer books overall, which generates negative long-term results for publishers, literary agencies, libraries, authors, and readers. Avid readers use libraries for introduction and access to evolving technologies and unfamiliar authors. Libraries are taxpayer-subsidized public relations, product advertising and marketing for publishers.

     The exclusionary philosophies of Imperialism are counterproductive in the 21st-century world of all access, all the time for anyone, anywhere with secure Internet access. In the U.S., public libraries and public schools cast the widest net among the masses. They also offer the broadest range of opportunities to catch the attention of students as future consumers and their parents as current consumers--especially poorer communities where the potential for expansion is greater because those markets are underdeveloped.

     In families where the adults work low-wage, low-tech jobs, children introduce their parents to evolving technologies through their curiosity-driven observations and exposure in school. The socio-economic digital divide doesn't just limit opportunities for poor and underprivileged people, it limits possibilities and constricts growth for the entire 70% retail consumer-driven economy.

BATAF: Most people are expendable.

Deja Vu

Confession: When my girlfriends call to rehash the most recent episode of the same recurring (that I can recite verbatim) fight with their men, I'm reading silently while occasionally murmuring agreement and saying, "Really?...No!...What?"

(My lesbian friends work out their relationship issues by discussing them with their partners and wives.)

BATAF: Women who say they're happily single are pretending.