FANSHEN: Recently I asked my friends, when was the first time they learned about the one-drop rule, and their answers were incredible, so we’re sharing them with you here, and we’d like to hear yours. So send us an email onedropoflove@gmail.com, tweet us, anything, and let us know: When was the first time YOU learned about the one-drop rule?
RUDY GUEVARRA, JR.: I took an undergraduate course at the University of San Diego – Intro to Ethnic studies and that’s where I learned about it. As somebody that was mixed race it really made me interested into how that functioned with identity and larger issues of race relations. And that course gave me that information and that one thing got me interested in understanding how race functions. I’m racialized Chicano and oftentimes when I’ve had conversations, I’ll say I’m Filipino, or I’ll say I’m Mexipino and they’re like, “But you’re Chicano,” and I’m like, “Yeah, but I’m this too.” And the fact that, I think that I have this ‘drop’ – but more so the phenotype that comes with that drop, I think that there’s a conversation that I have to push back on sometimes, from people. Sometimes, and in particular within the Latino community, in particular the Mexican or Chicano community, they don’t often think that…or there’s not so much…there is and there isn’t…this association with Blackness and these connections and intimate relationships with Blackness that I engage in and always felt this engagement with, that I get questioned on sometimes.
But, I’m going to love who I love – and I don’t care what anybody says.
CHANDRA CRUDUP: Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to keep up with the latest One Drop news and other videos. Do you have ideas for more video content? Tell us what you’d like to see. We’ll see you next time to share more drops of love. Be sure to tell us by commenting here and on twitter @onedropoflove andfacebook.com/ondedropoflove how YOU are spreading drops of love.
FANSHEN: Recently I asked my friends when was the first time that they heard about the one-drop rule. And their answers were really incredible, so we’re sharing them here and we’d like to hear yours. So send us an email (onedropoflove(at)gmail, tweet us, anything, and let us know: when was the first time that YOU learned about the one-drop rule?
MARK: I self-identify as mixed, but I am politically Black. In our family we never talked about race or the one-drop rule – anything. And so basically I just intuited that there was a one-drop rule because I was defined as Black growing up as far as my experiences.
My dearest friend, growing up, would call me “contraband” because he learned about the phrase – he read something about slavery and that a slave that was seeking freedom, if they were caught they were considered ‘contraband’ and he thought that was funny. I had no knowledge, so he was calling me contraband and it hurt like hell and I had no ability to defend myself or to articulate a different argument.
So it really wasn’t until I graduated from high school, I was in the Marine Corps, I came across an interesting story in the New York Times about a woman who was suing the State of Louisiana because her birth certificate said that she was ‘Colored.’ She was raised White, she self-identified as White. And she fought her case all the way up to the Supreme Court and lost because according to state law, in 1970 if you were just any – any trace of Black, you were Colored to 1/32 Black, you were Colored. And she had 3/32s – they even went so far as to hire a genealogist. And so that fascinated me – it really resonated with me. I couldn’t articulate why, but I just found it a fascinating story.
Ten years later I was attending school at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland and I learned about the one-drop rule. And that’s where I learned about slavery, I learned about Manifest Destiny, etc. etc. etc. And I learned about the one-drop rule and I learned how pernicious and ridiculous it is and how hard we work to create a caste system and what really saddened me was defining Black as a negative – that if you had any part Black in you, that was not a good thing. And that’s…that’s heartbreaking. Nobody should ever have that experience and it will end because of people like Fanshen, who are creating this space for us to talk about elements of racism such as the one-drop rule and I’m very appreciative and have much gratitude for allowing me to share my story of how I learned about the one-drop rule.
CHANDRA CRUDUP: Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to keep up with the latest One Drop news and other videos. Do you have ideas for more video content? Tell us what you’d like to see. We’ll see you next time to share more drops of love. Be sure to tell us by commenting here and on Twitter and Facebook, how YOU are spreading drops of love.
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OK so Mama Trudy and I went to the Baldwin Hills Overlook and it was really really
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cool, so here’s a little video of the
time that we spent.
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Three-quarters, three-quarters of the way
up. Alright. LAST LEG! LAST LEG! LAST LEG! YAYYY!!!
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Down at the bottom we finished. Mama Trudy: I said, “Aren’t we gonna do it another time!?”
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Fanshen: That’s my Mama. THAT is my Mama Trudy. And I said, “No. Hell. No.”
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OK. Let’s see I want to tell you about Friendship, Networking and Support that happened this week.
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So. Remember last week I told you about that play that I did? And I was saying the name of the author
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and I was like, “Keersten Greenidge”
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Well, it turns out – so today I was on Facebook and a friend of mine posted that, who I thought was “Keersten”
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but it’s actually “Kirsten” Greenidge, her play was chosen to be produced somewhere
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and she was saying congratulations, and I was like, “How cool . I just learned about this
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playwright last week. Well then another
friend of mine posted, “My cousin is doing this play, congratulations to my cousin!”
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So it turns out that she is actually the cousin, a family member of a good friend of
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mine that I grew up with so shout out to
the Greenidges of Cambridge, MA. Particularly
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Chip Greenidge – George Greenidge – that is so
cool and I’m so sorry that I mangled
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her name in the last video and also that
I didn’t learn more about her and didn’t
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put the connections together. I also had
lunch with a couple of wonderful women
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in my life. I had lunch with my friend
Sarah who is an editor and director
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and a producer, and she does
documentary film and she also has a
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distribution company. I’ll put links to her
company in the Description box. But she
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pitched me a couple of ideas for films
that she wants to do. One that she’s
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already definitely doing with a friend
and I was like, “I want to be involved.” So I’ll
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tell you more about it as soon as I
confirm that I’m actually going to be
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involved, and find out if it’s okay to
talk about it. I also had lunch with Mama
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Trudy and my good friend Katherine
today and we went
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for a long walk in Venice and that was really nice. And it’s always good to kind of just get my
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mind off of social media and get my mind
off of work and just go spend time with
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friends and that was lovely so – what do you do
when you need to get a break from social
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media? What are the ways that you get
away?
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Ok. A rant. So Jimmy Kimmel did this disgusting, racist,
bullshit, “sketch” today and I don’t even
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understand how you – now at this moment –
with all of the information that we have
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available to us, can possibly think that
something like this
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sketch would be funny to anybody who has
been oppressed by and hurt by this
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system that constantly ignores – willfully
ignores – the pain that Black and Brown and
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Native and Asian people are
expressing about not being represented
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in the media. I don’t know I
don’t even understand it, so I was
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incensed by that. Ok so now I want to talk
about the way that you can do this
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right – so first of all, Stephen Colbert
had DeRay McKesson on his show this
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week. This was another I think good step
in the right direction – like they
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actually openly talk about white
privilege. He switched seats with DeRay
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and and really let DeRay talk about
solutions he’s working on. Solutions
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about police brutality and that was
awesome. We still have so far to go, but
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description and I’m encouraging you,
Sister: make that reel! We’re gonna make that
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reel happen, OK? And Peter: thank you for
commenting. I had some great comments
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from folks who were representing the
Latin American voice and I really
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appreciate that. I want us to exchange from
a wide variety of opinions. I may not agree
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with you and I may
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tell you I don’t agree with you,
but that’s cool that’s why we’re doing
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this – so keep those coming. Irvienne: you are always there. Thank YOU so much for watching the
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videos and commenting and continuing to
support my work. Please tell me how I can
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support you. Annnnd…Mama Trudy:
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’cause I know you’re watching my videos. Thank you so much for watching the videos Mama. OK! NEW GOALS! Alright for this week so first
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of all, now that I know we’ve got a list
of the places we want to take the show
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now it’s a matter of getting specific
about venues that are in those places
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and then creating emails to the people
that can help bring the shows – there so
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I’ll let you know how that goes. Oh!
Occidental College – remember
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I said about Oxy last week?
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Well, I didn’t do that goal. But I got to talk
to my writing partner who is coming on
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board for the Social Justice Theatre and Media
channel and we said it’s ok; we’re gonna
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be ok with ourselves that we’re moving a
little slowly with that, but I’m gonna add
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Oxy College to this week’s goal ’cause I didn’t get
it done and I want to get it done. And so I’ll share more on that with you
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this week. And finally I’m going to spend
a total of four hours transcribing and
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making notes on past Q&A videos that we
have for One Drop of Love because I want to
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put together kind of like a best of all
the Q&A videos that we’ve done because I
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think those are a really good way to show
people the kinds of dialogue of a kinds
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of conversations and even hopefully
actions that people are propelled to
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take after seeing the show.
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Alright. Thank you again so much for
watching. Please add your thoughts and
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comments and let’s keep working hard
as ARTIVISTS. Let’s put our creativity out
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there in the world.
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Let’s put our activism out there in the
world and let’s just keep making things
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better for as many people as we can.
TRANSCRIPT
So did anybody see that La Guardia Cross video this week? It…ahm…has toddler in it. This man having a conversation with his toddler. I’m gonna put a link in the description box. It’s freaking amazing and so first of all his graphic skills are incredible. His editing skills are incredible. So I’m gonna use him as a model – use his videos as a model. Also just
his baby is so amazing.
So I started looking at some earlier videos he did and he started off on Youtube – one of his first videos was saying, “I’ve always wanted to be a musician and I promise you that in a year from now I will have had success. It’s really really cool. So I got inspired by that and actually at the end of this video today I’m gonna tell you my goals for next week. So I’m not exactly going with the year approach – although in my head I have what I want to do in a year – but with these videos I’ll try to end with my goals for the upcoming week and then we can see if I actually did them or not.
Okay see? My camera’s trying to make this hard for me today and told you I have these goals; one of them is to do these videos once a week and it’s already proving to be a little bit hard, but I’m going to do it anyway! So I just recorded the whole video and then I went back and only half of it was recorded because I didn’t have enough space. So now there is a whole different lighting and all of that.
Anyway, ANYWAY it’s not about the lighting is it? It’s about this week as an ARTIVIST. Alright so I’m gonna get back into it.
Sunday evening I got called – I think I told you last week – I got called to replace an actor for a reading and the reading is at a local theater and it was in consideration of doing this play there. And I loved the piece. So it’s called “The Luck of the Irish” by Kirsten I think it’s (Kuhr-stin) might be (Keehr-stin) Greenidge Kirsten Greenidge and takes place in the 1950s and today. Back in the 1950s this Black couple, wealthy Black couple, gets this poor Irish couple to buy their house for them because they were going to be discriminated against – they we’re going to be able to get it so the Black couple pays the Irish couple some money and then the Irish couple goes, gets the deed. Once the deed is done, it’s their house and you know their neighbors have to deal with that then, but at least they own the house. Well in present-day, the grand daughter of – one of the granddaughters – of that Black couple is living in the house, raising her family there and the old woman now of that Irish couple shows up and says, “We never signed the deed over to you. The house actually still belongs to us. Now that your grandmother died, grandparents died, we want my house back. It’s a really powerful peace and I was happy to be a part of it. Of course it’s the work that I do. I love doing work that really makes us think and talk about and hopefully take action around race and racism and discrimination. So this was really, really cool and I was very proud to be part of that. OK.
Golden Globes and Academy Awards. The Golden Globes took place this week and the Academy Award nominations came out this weekend. I mean I have very little to say other than I am so tired of a system that does not value and support and even acknowledge the stories of anybody who is not White – and also the people who are making those stories are anyone but White men and I’m tired of it. And I’m working on some solutions because I think that’s important. I also think it’s important to complain. I have a lot of friends – because I’m vocal about it on social and I have a lot of
friends who are like, “You just always talk about it.” And I’m like, “No. I also do things, but
talking about it is important as well. See they say that to you so you won’t talk about it; you won’t complain about it. And they get to just hang out and be like, “Everything’s cool. I don’t hear any complaints about it.” Oh no. We need to get loud about it and we need to take action. So I can talk about some of the action I’m taking. I can’t talk about all of it, but when I can, believe me I will. Certainly like one of the things I do is directly call out the folks that I know that are in positions of power that can do something about this I call them
out and I also speak to them personally and say, “What are you going to do about
this?” and “Here are some suggestions” So this whole award thing is frustrating because I have chosen profession that in some ways needs some kind of validation from that in order to move forward, in order to make a living at this. At the same time I am, you know, more and more getting to the point where I’m like, “Let me find ways to work outside the system because the system is not meant for folks like me.”
Monday I applied to a screening series that will take place in Brooklyn. Applied with the One Drop of Love live theater show that we filmed and I’m really proud of it. And we had ninety percent women working on the set. And our Editors and pretty much everyone who worked on it is a woman and it looks good. It looks good. My friend Carol was the director and I’m just really proud of it. So wish us luck and I’ll keep you posted on that.
Tuesday night I watched “The Danish Girl” and let me tell you one thing that I can watch is marginalized White people. Because even though on one hand here’s this White man who identifies as a woman – and what she did was amazing in terms of being like, “This is who I am,” – but at the same time, it’s not lost on me that when you look like that, you are able to… it’s easier for you than it is for other folks who don’t look White and don’t present to the world as White – it is easier for you to say, “Hey, I was born a man – what the world calls a man – but that’s not who I am. And it’s amazing, so I am down with watching movies about marginalized White people. That’s why I liked “Room” too. If you saw “Room” – same thing. Like, “Ok, I can watch this.”
OK so I got some good news and some bad news.
One of the shows in Mesa got canceled due to low sales and I told you already the last time there was practically no one in the audience – and this time they are keeping two of the shows: a morning and night show on Friday, but they did cancel the Saturday show and the good news is: this time I’m not blaming myself. I’m not blaming the show. I know I have a good show I’m confident about the show.
And also I am ending the relationship with my agents. I’ve been represented by one of the top agencies in LA – well, not ‘I’ – the SHOW – has been represented by one of the top agencies in LA for about two and a half years and I am so grateful to them. It’s
been great, but I am hopeful and feel really good and confident about working without them, too. So, we’ll see. It was definitely an ego blow. Like you feel rejected, you feel like, obviously there’s something about this and maybe about me that is not working out with you, but at the same time I feel like this is an opportunity to show me and my team what we can accomplish together without this powerful agency behind us and I feel like we are gonna be able to do it.
OK here’s the not-fun part about being an artivist is you do have to market yourself and your projects because nobody else is gonna do it for you, and there’s no budget for it to be done. So I released a One Drop video – Team One Drop – with Dr. Chandra Crudup – released that on Wednesday and then and I scheduled it to go out many, many times on Twitter, on Facebook, on Pinterest, on Tumblr. I’m learning through watching YouTube videos watching other you to people – that’s what you have to do to get people to watch the videos and if people watch the videos you go higher up on the rank on Youtube so then if somebody types in racism or gender questions, they’ll say, Hey you should watch this video.” So it’s all…not my favorite part of being an artivist but, it is an important part and I’m ok with doing it.
Inspired by La Guardia Cross and his incredible toddler, I am going to make goals – not for the whole year like La Guardia Cross did – but for the next week. So next week when I check in I’ll let you know how I did in terms of meeting these goals. So I am going to get
nice and organized now that I am my own agent, and now that I have Lilah
working as a Booking Consultant, we’re gonna get organized and make a calendar for
2016 that will include places that have already requested the show and some date
potentials for those as well as: what are our dream places? where do we want
to see the show go? We’re going to get those ideas down so I’m gonna have a list
by next week of like my BIG dream places to take the show and then the following
weeks…well I’m not going to say the following weeks because I want to make this goal realistic and doable so we’re gonna do that. And for the Social Justice Theater and Media channel, I’m going to finish my script for Occidental College which I’ll explain when you see the video, but Oxy College, so ask me next week, “Did you do your script for Oxy College?” because I’ve got to make that happen.
OK. What are your goals this week? Do you have goals as an Artivist? What are the ways that you’re going to advance social justice out there in the world and also nurture yourself as a creative person, as an artist. What are you doing this week? Tell me in the comments. Ask a question.
Make a video – and tell me and I’ll put it in the playlist and have a great, great, great week.
Strength. Courage. Justice. We GOT this you all. We GOT this. Alright. Talk to you next week. Bye bye.
