Forget Me Not Friday: Damn that Ginufine

This post is painful to remember. *Deep breath* it's so difficult to talk about...my seventh grade spring dance. An exotic dancer I shall never be.


If I could erase any year from memory, it'd be 1997. I would choke the life out of it. I was 13, just starting middle school, awkward, and part of the Beat It Entourage with my all-white-everything socks and highwater jeans. Trust, if I was a dude, babies down the line would've been difficult.


It was the end of the school year and I was determined to unleash a new Gina (the "Mae" would be added later which is a whole 'notha "Forget Me Not Friday"). 


This dance was the business because one of the DJs from WKYS 93.9 was deejaying for our party.  I borrowed one of the BFF's high school ensembles and showed off a little of my skinnty leg. No stanky for me that day! Oh NO! Not me and my high school outfit.

From the Awesomenss Archives: Indiana University Upward Bound Interview July 2008

My tenure as an English instructor for the Indiana University Bloomington Upward Bound program (Summer 2007, Summer 2008) are some of my most cherished memories. These kids changed my life. I hope I had a fraction of that impact on them.


We really need to save Upward Bound and ALL TRIO programs. I'm always hearing "oh the children, the children..." well, it's time to back that up like Juvenile.


The following video was shot the last week of the program after we found out it was shutting down. And yes, that's a snippet of "Excuses" on the chalkboard LOL.


Many thanks to Malinda Aston of the Indiana Daily Student for hooking me up!

Regina Barnett Discusses Upward Bound's Future

All the Good Black Men are DSGBs

This is the honest, straight-from-the-"little"-A truth about why there's supposedly a shortage of good black men. I'm serious. No lie. Coming from the ovaries. Scientifically researched, all business account of how to attract and maintain the elusive good black man. For real though. No smiles appeared in the writing of this post. *mean mug*

I'm just a simple servant of the quill blessed with many friends and ideas. And a southern twang.

So you (yes you, miss lady crying in the corner over there) are praying, hoping, whining, hoochie coo-ing for, or talking shit about the lack of one of those rare creatures known as a good black man. He's more elusive than Eddie Long's real hairline. Or Tiger Woods fidelity. Or...okay, he's hard to find. Well, after extensive qualitative, quantitative, and field research, and speaking with undercover agents in secret meetings, I have discovered where all the good black men are hiding.

Shhhhhh, don't tell everybody. This is sensitive information.

For Harriet Inaugural Roundtable Discussion

For Harriet, a recently minted online magazine for women of color, recorded their inaugural roundtable session yesterday.  Your girl was fortunate enough to be invited to participate alongside phenomenal women Deesha Philyaw, Desiree Adaway, and Starr Rhett. Thank you Kimberly Foster for the opportunity to be part of history. Enjoy!

John Legend Tweets Hip Hop Soul

Recently, John Legend tweeted that he was about to perform with the hip-hop group The Roots and threw out the term “hip hop soul.” Fascinated, I tried to think of some sexy, academic way to place this term in our current state of hip-hop culture. I got nothin’.

Well, almost nothing. Legend’s blending of rap and Soul music speaks to an attempt to bridge generations. It also seeks to address how memory is shaping contemporary black music and identity.

Black music has long been a gauge of the temperament and social trauma afflicting African Americans. Often it eased, uplifted, and re-enforced the African American spirit.

Here’s an abbreviated walk through:

Black music’s complex formula of intertwining agency and aesthetics is especially prevalent in its trajectory. Negro Spirituals, for example, reflected the fusion and critique of Anglo-Christian theology with slave culture. Using the Biblical Old Testament and, more specifically, the book of Exodus, slaves coded messages of escape and disdain through their communal singing.

Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead,” and Bobby Womack’s “Across 110^th Street” are only a sampling of the soundtrack that mirrored the struggle and frustration echoed by blacks in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Soul’s integration into mid 20^th century black life is a fascinating journey. It gave voice to the grittier aspects of the African American experience that gospel music often attempted to ameliorate or overlook.

Soul music made space for hip-hop, reflecting a change in generational observations about similar social ills that afflicted their predecessors. Any suppressed anger left over from the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements extrapolated in rap narratives.

Read Complete Essay at NEWSONE

Step Your Academic Game Up: 2011 Summer Humanities Institute

I am a UCLA Summer Humanities Institute alum (fellowship class of 2006). It was the best academic bootcamp I've ever had in my life. I learned to think more critically, sophisticate my writing, and lose my fear of the red pen. Thanks, Dr. Berky Nelson. You're my dude for life.

The application process is open for the fellow class of 2011. If you're an undergrad or recent graduate who has not started graduate school, please apply.  The opportunity is life changing. And so sexy on the CV.  APPLY! 

SHI 2011 Application Process

Chalky Under the Boardwalk: Race and Entitlement in Boardwalk Empire

Let me go ahead and get this out the way. HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is blanched. Like a white ass that hasn’t seen a tanning bed. Ever. You see the occasional black person (don’t blink now, hear?) but it’s good.
While I can’t even get mad at Boardwalk’s strive to maintain an accurate historical context, I am intrigued by the inclusion of Michael K. Williams’ character Chalky White in the lineup.

Williams’ portrayal of Chalky is just as, ahem, intoxicating as his previous HBO character Omar Little of The Wire. An African American bootlegger with southern roots, Chalky maneuvers his way through the dealings of prohibition era Atlantic City, New Jersey. On the surface, Chalky is the token black character of the series. He has dialogue instead of literal one-liners that restrict fellow African American cast members.

The muteness of black characters in the series is in part due to the series’ blatant white (male) supremacist discourse. The inextricable linkage of entitlement and white patriarchal privilege frames the Boardwalk Empire narrative. This relationship teeters on a multifaceted platform of gender, class, and race.

Chalky’s presence, however, is more significant and complicated than being Boardwalk’s token black guy. He embodies the struggle for access to entitlement afforded to men like main character Nucky Thompson because of his whiteness. Chalky’s name also symbolizes this struggle, doubly signifying how whiteness is a social construct and his effort to one-up “the man” (chalk also means to score). He challenges the embedded privilege of whiteness and class. These privileges are inaccessible to marginalized Black men.

Read Complete Essay at NEWSONE

For Colored Girls Who Think Tyler Perry is Enough

My first encounter with Tyler Perry was back in 2003 during an all-nighter freshman year at Albany State University (shameless plug. Go Rams!). A girlfriend called me into her room and put in the stage play Madea’s Family Reunion. I’d never heard of Tyler Perry or Madea, but enjoyed the stage play sans the seemingly infinite gospel interludes – probably because I am Methodist and used to operatic singing of hymns.



The Madea character and Perry in general did not get “scholarly” for me until I taught a black gender archetype course last year. By the time I found myself in a position to analyze Perry’s impact on black and American popular culture he was no longer a member of the underground stage play chitilin-esque circuit. Perry’s catapulting into Hollywood as a legit producer because of crossover successes including movie adaptations of his stage plays, a hand in the film Precious (2009) and his latest screen adaptation For Colored Girls set to hit theatres at the end of the year suggest Perry not only as a powerhouse of African American film but also as a gateway for the interpretation of blackness and, more particularly, late 20th and 21st century black women’s experiences. The majority of Perry’s women characters validate their blackness and ultimately their womanhood through overcoming horrifically traumatic ordeals. Perry’s presentations of black women’s narratives are often monolithic and all consuming, which has lead many critics and Shange enthusiasts to voice concerns about how Perry manhandled (pun intended) the script. Perhaps the biggest question/fear is if Madea makes a cameo appearance as the lady in drag.

This essay, however, is not to address whether or not Perry qualifies as a legit producer or screenwriter for For Colored Girls. Rather, I am intrigued by the advertisement of the film and, more particularly, the individual actress posters released to market it. I was particularly struck by the vividness of the colors (or lack thereof) used for each actress and how those details paralleled the narratives being presented in each frame.

 Read Complete Essay at TheLoop21

Rackin' Up on the Down Low: Profiting off of Queer Sexuality

Oprah tried to show out with her revisit to the downlow on today's show.  I'm not even going to front, I fidgeted in my seat just a lil'. Not because of the content but the timing and presentation of the topic. While I applaud your effort to bring this grave concern to the forefront, Oprah boo, you should have really thought this one though just a little bit longer.  Is it because you're still mad at Kanye?

Held to His Unchanging Hand: My Paw Paw, Eugene Barnett, Jr.

Allow me to say from the offset that I'm privileged, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, all the world bows at my feet, and I have no idea what the term "struggle" entails.  Now that I have acknowledged any factor that would misconstrue, distort, misinterpret, or disrespect the intent of this personal narrative, I have yet one more disclaimer: this essay is about my grandaddy, my Paw Paw. And if one so desires to do any of the above, I will unapologetically and with no regrets use said privilege to whoop yo ass.