Welcome to the Miscegenated American. This blog focuses on pop culture and politics throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. I’ve always loved to write, and, lately, I am confronted with the boredom I require actually to do it. I like to be funny but often fail miserably in my attempt. Why not share?
Most of my pieces, and many of my opinions, frankly, are culled from the eighteen-hour days I pull on my sofa watching MSNBC. Currently, I’m unemployed. I have been fired from or quit approximately ten positions in the past 2 years. I overachieve at everything. I am bipolar. It overlaps with everything. It’s all a gift.
I’m a native Angeleno with a never-used master’s degree in Black (African American) Studies. I focused on performances of blackness in 20th Century history, with a special focus on popular culture. Entering my MA program, my goal was to teach junior college. I truly enjoyed my time there and had several inspiring teachers who set me up for academic success. Instead, I enrolled in a PhD program. It was my first year, I was far away from my then-boyfriend. I was not only a student, but I also taught Intro to AA Studies to a bunch of white kids. I was unfamiliar with some of the curriculum. I was completely invisible to my Department Chair and more seasoned professors. I’ve never led a classroom since,
Finally, I’m miscegenated. For those who may be unfamiliar with the idea, miscengenation laws, mostly on Southern law books, made it illegal for interracial marriages. These laws were enacted to protect white women, singularly, from entering partnerships with demonized black men. Jim Crow was a bitch. Nevertheless, both of my parents self-identify as black. And they are…technically. According to Ancestry, I am almost as much white as I am black. My parents are miscegenated. Both of my maternal grandparents were miscegenated, both of them had white mothers. My paternal great-grandmother was white. We are all Black Americans…even the white ones according to censuses taken every ten years when my maternal grandmother was born/rasied white. Then she married my great-grandfather and was recorded as mulatto. After her husband passed and most of the kids were out of the house, she was once again white. See? Race is a cultural construct!!
As a college student, I was trained to think and write in styles that, in some ways, I now reject. I’m honest, and it is not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings (mostly). That said, I do not care about your feelings. Along those lines, I have no interest in maintaining a “safe space” and/or avoiding or providing “trigger warnings”.
I reject these ideas, not because I don’t want to provide a space for individuals to speak freely about their experiences. Safe spaces, in my experience, tend to exclude differentiating ideas. Some group members fear expressing themselves freely dreading the backlash for straying from party lines. I prefer open, honest, and mostly-respectful conversations. People say shit in the heat of the moment. I get it. Just try to keep it kosher.
Any word and every word now has the effect of triggering all manner of self-victimization. There are too many kids coming out of university that are ill-prepared for adulthood. They’ve been coddled by their parents and teachers from kindergarten past high school. They have been led to believe that their feelings are everything. They have been lied to. They are not all winners. They require a lot of energy. They’re weak.
This blog is not for the faint of heart. I write in bursts. In those bursts, there is bound to be something that offends someone, which, we are told, is trauma-inducing. The words I write might have you in stitches, but I can guarantee that you will not end up in the critical care unit because they make