Frida Kahlo is my muse (0:00-1:26) (2:31-3:00)
NY Times review of 1992 Frida Kahlo documentary: http://nyti.ms/1SJonfY
University of Utah College of Social Work, Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah (1:24-3:15)
Museum of Tolerance 3/31/16 (3:17-4:48)
Venmo App = racist? (4:48-5:54)
50 Push-up challenge (5:55-6:17) http://bit.ly/20234gp
What are YOUR goals? (6:20-7:09)
TRANSCRIPT:
So, do you know who Frida Kahlo is? I saw a documentary of Frida Kahlo when I was teaching Spanish to students in the 90s. I was teaching in a high school and my Supervising Teacher recommended that I show my students a documentary about Frida Kahlo, and I had known about her a little bit, I had probably seen her art but I didn’t know a whole lot about her life and I watched this documentary – I mean talking about the original Artivist – I mean not THE original because there have been other Artivists in the world and before her, but in so many ways her work and who she was as a person represents so much of what I want to be. Her work is both deeply personal, but also it talks about the power that women have when we share all of who we are, even when that feels very personal and you start to realize that you have connections to other people by sharing it and I love her. And this summer I was in Mexico and I found this bag, and I was like, “Yes. This is my bag.” And she just inspires me so whenever I travel to do the show I take this bag with me.
So I took this bag with me to our show at the University of Utah, which we did on Tuesday. And we had an incredible time. So the show was the closing act of the 10th anniversary of the University of Utah’s College of Social Work Social Justice series. This is put on by this incredible woman teacher, Educator, powerful woman there named Irene Ota. She invited Chandra and me to see her class and she’s doing a class social justice advocacy for social workers, and they’re creating toolkits for social justice advocacy and all of their projects were incredible. One woman is doing a support group for Transracially Adopted kids in Salt Lake City. Another woman is creating a website for parents to know their rights, the educational rights for themselves and for their children. They were just so great and amazing and inspiring! It was wonderful.
And then the best part is that then Irene took us out to dinner – we had dinner with some of the students and faculty before the show – the night before the show. And we’re walking up to dinner and Chandra goes, “Oh! Fanshen! Look at the name of this restaurant we’re going to!” and the name of the restaurant is ‘Frida Bistro’ and I got this gorgeous t-shirt from Irene – thank you Irene! That is at Frida Bistro in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was just a wonderful restaurant, the food was great and we were sitting there blessed by Frida herself.
I got to speak with quite a few people after the show and they were really moved and had lots of follow up questions, and I’m so proud that we were able to do the show there. So if any of you are watching from the University of Utah – thank you for having us – it was really inspiring.
OK this morning I did the show at the Museum of Tolerance here in Los Angeles. And it was so nice to go from – you know that I had big audiences, 1500 students a week ago and then Utah a really big stage, and then here it seats about 115 people or so, but generally these are smaller groups so probably about 35 or 40 people and I’m really up close to them and it makes a difference – it’s a very different feeling of the staging, but it’s really nice because it’s intimate and I can literally look right into people’s faces and interact with them directly. So it’s always nice to be back at the Museum, and also one woman who came today has seen the show there before, and she said, “You know I saw some new things here today,” so that was great – so she’s noticing that I’m making changes.
Now also by the way we have two new slides. So I talked a little bit about pacing last week, and how I’m looking at places to pick up the pacing, but I also realized that there’s a slide that can help situate the audience a little bit more when my father and I are both traveling I’m paralleling our trips to Africa together, so I’ve included a slide of when my father went to the Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Now interestingly, I’m using Venmo – Venmo is an app that you can use to pay people quickly. I asked my graphic designer Heather Fipps (who’s amazing – thank you Heather!) – I asked her to create a new slide and when I paid her on Venmo you write a little note like a memo on a check and I wrote “ODOL (One Drop of Love) Slide Sudan Ethiopia.” Well they put a flag on the payment and I just got an email from Venmo telling me they had to investigate my payment and they needed to know exactly what this payment was for, since I had used the words ‘Sudan’ and ‘Ethiopia.’ Interesting. Racist? I don’t what to say. All I can think of is, “My God, if you are Sudanese or Ethiopian, what life must be like for you now. And I am sorry for people who prejudge you – not that I have to apologize for what they do, but I’m sorry for what you have to go through.
OK this week I’m going to do a physical goal. A friend of mine posted on Facebook a 50 Push-up Challenge and so it takes you through – you start out with 5 push-ups then you move on to 10 and you get rest breaks and then you move on to 12, and then you keep moving on and you do 50 push-ups eventually! So that’s my goal.
How about you? What are your goals? Are you writing? Are you performing? Are you workshopping your work? Are you sharing your work with other people? Are you sharing your story? Someone said today, after the Museum show, “Y’know, your story is incredible,” and I said I didn’t know that until I started sharing it with people. YOUR story is incredible too. You just gotta get it out there – and find out about your parents’ stories, and their parents’ stories and it’s so important to hear someone else’s narrative, so that we are not stuck in what we believe they are just based on what we see on the outside. OK. Thank you for watching #ThisWeekasanArtivist. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye bye!
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.
CHANDRA: One of the best parts about the post-show conversations is when people feel compelled to share their own stories. In this clip, Ashley shares what it’s like for her as a Black female traveling through the Dominican Republic.
ASHLEY: One of the things that really resonated with me was the dynamic with race in other cultures. As a Black individual I’ve had the experience to go live in the Dominican Republic and there’s this racial dynamic between Haitians and Dominicans and oftentimes I was cussed out in four languages, by Haitians – they were telling me I’m denying my Haitian roots. The Dominican family I lived with, they had problems with my braids because those were identified as Haitian. Especially as a Black American you go on these journeys to really figure out who you are because you DO have so many people trying to tell you who you are – or what it means to be Black, or what it means to be this and, you think – well I had the perception that if I go overseas, I’ll be able to connect more, and I’ll be able to just be me, and it won’t have to be about race or how dark I am or how I sound and, just hearing that my experience wasn’t the only experience like that. That it really didn’t matter, like I didn’t find that oneness, that wholeness that I was expecting to find. I found more divisions. And hearing that in the story, it was sad.
Because I’m actually a Youth Pastor at an all-White church (laughs). At an all-White church. I never share that story. I always kind of tread on light water because I always have this feeling that…I know that my being here is a great thing, but it ruffles some feathers as well. And it’s like you never know when you’re put in these environments how you’re supposed to be. What’s uncomfortable? What’s not comfortable enough? What’s too, what’s saying too much? How bold can I be? Our congregation is older, white individuals, it’s a highly conservative church and things that are just uncomfortable? We don’t really do.
PATTI: And that’s the show. Like, if it’s uncomfortable…
ASHLEY: You just gotta deal with it yourself. You’re uncomfortable within yourself because you can’t find any comfort talking about it. But, with this show I appreciate it because you realize how many people have similar stories. Even if it’s just a little part of her story resonates with someone else, you realize that, OK. I’m not uncomfortable by myself. People ARE talking about this. And…one story DOES make a difference. The stories are never the same but the themes are always recurring. It’s human nature.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey…What’s up, Artivists? How’s it going? What’s going on with your goals? Have you reached any of them? I didn’t get the goal of getting a new show booking last week, but that’s OK. But some amazing things happened this week – really wonderful, positive stuff, good stuff for storytelling, good stuff for Artivism, for the stories I want to tell so I’ll fill you in a little bit on those things.
OK. Beyonce’s #Formation video came out last week just before the Superbowl and that song in the Superbowl and there was a lot of conversation about LOTS of things in the video, but something that was really important to me was the conversations about #colorism and #shadeism, especially in Louisiana, there are people called Creoles and what I didn’t know is that Creole does not mean ‘light-skinned’ and that was the idea that I had, but a woman named Yaba Blay wrote an article about living in Louisiana and having some really painful moments around shadeism and colorism and I was really moved by her piece and so I posted about it, and then some other folks from the Mixed and Creole community came on a were like, “Wait a minute – her analysis is lacking the fact that there are lots of Creole people who are ‘dark-skinned’ and it has to do with the geographical area you’re in and so it was really a great conversation – so shout out to Carolyn Battle Cochran, Joahana Workman, to Senta Burke for sharing your very personal story on our thread and I thank you so much. I just want to keep talking about things and I know I’m going to get things wrong, especially when it’s something I have zero context on – so I just appreciate the conversation and let’s keep that going.
On Tuesday I went to #KPCC, which is our local #NPR station – one of our local NPR stations here in LA and had an interview with Leslie Berestein Rojas – she’s doing a story about #multiracial identity in Los Angeles and so that’s coming out on Monday. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk a little bit about One Drop and talk about my experiences being a Mixed person growing up and how I’ve evolved around that and how my focus more is on justice – so we had a great conversation and I’ll put a link once that comes out and I’ll talk about it more next week.
While I was at KPCC, I met Liz Garbus, so anyway I hugged her and said thank you for her documentary – What Happened, Miss Simone if you didn’t see it, I believe it’s still on Netflix. It’s really powerful – speaking of shadeism and colorism – it is very, very clear in this movie, so check out that documentary.
OK so, I have been an ESLTeacher for the majority of my life at this point – I started teaching ESL after I joined the…when I joined the Peace Corps right after college. I lived in West Africa and I taught ESL and I coordinated the English Department in the Cape Verdean Islands, West Africa and I’ve been teaching ESL pretty steadily ever since then everywhere. In New York City, in a high school in the South Bronx, I taught 5th grade for one year – a bilingual 5th grade class. I then taught in a few schools in Los Angeles including CalAmerica, where I met my husband Diego and…oh my gosh, maybe I’m going to cry. After that I taught at East LA College for a long time and then for the last 8 years or so I’ve been teaching at Glendale Community College, where the majority of the students are Armenian, we’ve recently had a lot of Syrian students come in and still there are also Latin American students mostly Guatemalan and Mexican and Salvadorian and Thursday was my last day teaching. And so I’m – whooo – I’m making a transition I can talk about the transition probably in next week’s video, but teaching ESL has been such a wonderful, wonderful, part of my life for the last 20 years and I will miss it so much. I’ll miss my students. I will certainly infuse my new job with everything. All the incredible tools that I learned and I’ll also maintain my relationships with the communities that motivated me to be grateful for everything that I have and to be grounded and to really understand what things are important in life – and that those are not material things – and they are not about money and power, they are about community, they are about family, they are about LOVE. And so I’m saying goodbye to ESL teaching, but not to my life as an Educator and to my life as a person who’s committed to justice and equity for everyone. So I want to say thank you – if you’re one of my students – I will miss you so much and you have made my life wonderful and THANK YOU for that. And you have my email address, so email me any time, and I’ll remind you how to use ‘Be’ verb correctly and ‘what is a noun’ and ‘what is a subject pronoun’ – I’ll remind you of all of that, so I am still your friend forever.
I am so proud, I have to say, of the students at CalState LA. So I went to CalState LA for my MFA and the students there have made a list of demands to the President of CalState LA. I’m going to put the link so that you can read. And they got it! They got the things that they were asking for – including divesting from private prisons, money to support their work – it’s so exciting. I’m so proud. And congratulations, keep up the amazing work you’re doing.
And shoutouts to everybody who’s been watching these videos! Thank you for watching them, thank you for your ‘likes’ on the videos. Please subscribe if you haven’t and also interact with me. I’m sorry I know this is a lot of just talking at you, but I don’t mean it to be, what I mean it to be is to hear from you your thoughts and questions. Let’s talk about Shadeism, ESL students if you’re watching you can ask me questions about grammar, and Artivists – what’s going on for you this week? What are your goals? What are you planning on getting done? What did you get done last week? Let me know. Let’s talk about it. What do you need support on? Have you got projects going that you need support on? Alright everybody have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful week. I’ll have great, amazing news for you that I can share next week. And until then: Bye Bye!
B.A.: I’ve known Fanshen since I was too young to admit, and I’ve been a supporter and a fosterer of her storytelling for a while – particularly around One Drop.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE ONE DROP CHARACTER?
B.A.: The father – because I find it really interesting the complicated relationships we have with our fathers – and fathers with daughters. I have two daughters and it’s been new ground for me. I find that really fascinating because it’s a fraught story and it’s not easy.
B.A.: The urgency and the need to have difficult conversations – and that most of us, even those of us who consider ourselves to be, like, “Hey, I’m a good person. I think of everyone as the same. I’m liberal and enlightened and so on – we all need to force ourselves into uncomfortable places to have uncomfortable conversations.”
WHAT IS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE CAREER MOMENT?
B.A.: When I got a part in an independent movie called “Dark Side of the Street” [Dark End of the Street] when I was 7 years old.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
B.A.: The project that I’m currently working on, you see behind you, is a movie called “Live by Night,” and it’s starring me and Zoe Saldana and Sienna Miller and all kinds of awesome actors.
One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class and gender – and in search of justice and LOVE. www.onedropoflove.com
Please SUBSCRIBE to support our work and to get updates on our channel
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At what age should you speak to young people about race, class, gender and justice? Diego has the perfect answer.
TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:21,400 –> 00:00:31,779 DIEGO: I think the main thing that comes with
racism is basically a child isn’t
00:00:31,779 –> 00:00:38,550
born a racist or homophobic. It’s
how their community raises them
00:00:38,550 –> 00:00:41,830
that way, and they learned that and
they know nothing but that. So do you try
00:00:41,830 –> 00:00:45,980
to show your shows in these
environments, in these communities to
00:00:45,980 –> 00:00:52,440
try to inform young people or anyone? FANSHEN: Yeah. Thank you.That’s such a great
00:00:52,440 –> 00:01:02,059
question. What school do you go to? (laughs) DIEGO: LACHSA. FANSHEN: Hey I know LACHSA. That’s at CalState LA!
00:01:02,059 –> 00:01:08,750
We’ll come! Yeah, absolutely. I’m
curious what you all think because people ask me
00:01:08,750 –> 00:01:13,460
what age range, and you see how I
grew up with my Mama Trudy – I could’ve watched
00:01:13,460 –> 00:01:16,900
the show when I was three, you know?
But I know that some of the
00:01:16,900 –> 00:01:20,950
themes are difficult. So what age do you
think would be appropriate for the show?
00:01:20,950 –> 00:01:25,540 DIEGO: I think there’s not really a starting age
to be informed, and I think anyone needs
00:01:25,540 –> 00:01:26,320
to know this stuff.
For Jan 2015 footage:
Direction by Carol Banker
Q&A Host Patti Lewis
Camera by Katie Walker http://bit.ly/1FSOtea
Music by Carol Doom
Editing and logo graphics by Alex Regalado http://bit.ly/1Lh73wE in association with SarafinaProductions http://bit.ly/1OkzzQD
The One Drop of Love logo was designed by Zerflin http://zerflin.com/
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Alright. Remember a couple weeks ago when I told
you that my best friend – one of my very
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best friends in the world – was applying
for a PhD in Philosophy and she sent me
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her application essay? Well: she got she
got IN! She got into her first choice school. I’m screaming because I’m so excited.
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Got into her first choice school with money –
funding to help her do it and I’m like,
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Black woman getting a PhD in Philosophy
and a Black woman getting a PhD in
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Philosophy who wants to talk about race
and racism within that. I’m SO excited. So anyway – shout out – I’m not
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gonna say your name out loud because you
may not want me to, but I’m so proud of
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you and I love you so much!
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Congratulations. Last weekend Mama Trudy
and I went to go see this great play
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adopted experience. And the play starts
off when Susan is meeting her
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birth mother for the first time. So
already there’s all this tension at the
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top of the play – and I’m like,”I understand that – what it feels like to have
tension in the top of your play. So – do
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you do this when you’re watching another
performer at the top of a play – you’re just
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feeling like all the feels – everything
they’re going through at that moment – so
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much pressure but that’s how she starts the
show and then she takes us on the
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journey of finding her birth mother and
it’s so moving and touching. So if it
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comes near you anywhere, I’ll put a link to her website and her information – go
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see it. It was lovely. OK so I think I told
you about Lilah Greenberg who has come
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on to help us book One Drop of Love and
she’s amazing. I can’t believe the amount
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of work she’s done so she’s helping me
fulfill all of those goals that I talked
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about in each video. She has sent out a bunch
of emails both to new places to kind of
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pitch the show and also doing outreach
to people in Mesa. And I got tickets for her
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to come to Mesa. So she’s gonna come to
Mesa. Chandra’s
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already in Phoenix so we’re all gonna
hang out together – hopefully
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we’ll have a little bit of time to do a
little One Drop retreat session and do
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some strategic planning. I’m really
excited to have her there and I think
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it’s going to be a great way to incorporate her into the show
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and she can see how things go in
different cities because she saw it in
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Cambridge which is like where we get so
much support and love and amazing but
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to see it in another city is just it’s a
whole different experience.
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Chandra booked the show in high school
so in a high school – THANK YOU CHANDRA! In Tempe, Arizona so
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I’ll give you details on that. I just – I
want to say how much I love working with
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women. I love men and there a lot of
men that I really really love and I
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respect and I think are great but I just –
I guess there’s something incredible and
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moving about working with women because
I think we are not always expected to
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take charge especially in the business sense
and then really make things happen and
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seeing how much these two women
are working on behalf of the show – which
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also means working on behalf of social
justice, on behalf of encouraging people
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to share their stories and melding
history, historical context, all together
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with sharing your story it’s just amazing and
I feel so grateful to have them and to
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be working with them. So: shout out to
WOMEN! Work with women if you haven’t, I
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highly recommend it. Alright I wanna talk to
you about your Day Job. So if you
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don’t know, if you’re not an artivist or an
actor or performer a lot of us obviously we
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have to pay the bills and you will
without question when you’re starting
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off and for a very long time and perhaps
forever you will have to do something
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that is not directly acting related in
order to survive. And so a lot of actors
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I know work in restaurants,
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they’re bartenders, hosts and I’ve done
some of that too, but I also have to say
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that I probably have well I’m biased but
I think one of the best possible Day
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Jobs for an actor which is that I teach
ESL. I teach at a community college
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nearby and it is so incredibly rewarding.
My students are from all over. The area
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where I teach is predominantly Armenian,
so a lot of them are Armenian; we also recently
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have a huge influx of Syrian students
and working with them makes me
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constantly grateful for the life that I
have and the life that I’m able to
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choose knowing what they are coming from
and knowing what they’ve experienced in
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their countries and their reasons behind
needing to come here. Also I love that
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they don’t give a crap about Hollywood.
And as much as I will admit that there
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are – in many ways I am driven by
getting validation from this system that
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on sometimes I hate and sometimes I
want to be a part of because I want to
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change it, I love that when I walk into
that classroom and I say something like,
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Did anybody hear about this “OscarsSoWhite” and they’re like, “We don’t
know. We don’t care. We need to feed our
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children. It’s refreshing to be reminded
that there are more important things
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than just being considered for an Oscar
much more important things. They’re just
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beautiful people not to mention by the
way I highly recommend this job – so I teach
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English as a Second Language. It is a
perfect job for theater actors because
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first of all my classes 55 students so I
have to project. It’s a huge class.
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I have to protect my voice. I also am
performing for – the class is three hours
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in this session – three and a half hours in the
longer sessions, and so I am performing
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the whole time – which means I have to make the class entertaining. So
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I’m using my skills of being
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an entertaining energetic
person to get this lesson across and I
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have to say there is no question in my
mind that that has been incredibly
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helpful for me thinking about how to
keep the audience interested how to have
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the audience interact within the play
and feel like they are part of this
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journey that were going on. So I’m so
grateful for that job. It’s really
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truly I feel so incredibly fortunate for
that to be my “Day Job.”
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OK whooo here’s the hard thing about being an artivist – we talked about
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marketing which is really hard
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the other thing is being a
businessperson. Somebody told me once –
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a therapist – told me, “All is fair in
business.” Ugh. And it was such a hard lesson to learn
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because I’ve worked with folks who
didn’t have integrity in business
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dealings – and that just hurt my heart
so much and I was like, “How can this be?”
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and she said, “Look, if
you’re interested in being in business –
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profit business – because yes I would like
to make money from my art, which
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sustains me to continue to do what I
think is important in the world. But: All
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is fair in that – and I thought, “OK, so I
can still be committed to maintaining my
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integrity and being fair with other
people, but I also have to accept that
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there are lots and lots of folks out
there who are not going to be fair and
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who don’t care about advancing justice
for other people and so
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so…all to say that I worked on accounting
this week and it was it’s not fun so I
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have to do W9s and 10199s for folks that
worked on One Drop this year – and I am so
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proud that I was able to pay some people
some money for working on the show, but
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it’s a lot of work and I guess I
would just encourage you to learn how to
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do all of that, up front, and be really
organized about who you pay and when and
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for what. That’s what I’m doing that will be
in my goals for 2016 because I did ok with
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it, but I could have done a lot better. I
applied to two more Film Festivals this
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keep you posted on those. I also heard from
one film festival the DC
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Independent Film Festival – we didn’t get
into that. It’s all good. It’s ALL good. We’ll just keep waiting to see
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how things go. I got asked to potentially
Assistant Direct a show at the Boston
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00:09:08,110 –> 00:09:12,390 Court Theatre. I read the script, I’m gonna
meet with the Director this weekend – and
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I’ll let you know how that goes. OK oh my
gosh. Tonight. Tonight
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Mama Trudy, Carol Banker and I are going to
see Sarah Jones in #SellBuyDate. Sarah Jones. You probably know who she is
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if you’re following this channel. She was a huge
inspiration for One Drop. I’ll put links
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to her incredible TED Talk and other work
of hers. She’s…I want to learn from her
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and so if I if there’s any way I can
even just shake her hand tonight, I
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will . But we’re going to see her tonight
and I’ll let you know how that goes next
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week. She is a true artivist. She tells
it like it is. She tells true stories and
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her goal is always to make positive
change
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and that’s what I want to
do, so I cannot wait. I can’t wait!
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OK goals this week. This week I wanna
have at least one new venue booked for
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One Drop so I’ll let you know how that
goes. What are your goals? What are you
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going to accomplish this week? Write in
the comments or make a video, tag me in
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the video
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whatever but also as I said at the top, what is
your day job? Let’s talk about what we
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all do and do we love it? And if we don’t love
it, let’s talk about other things we can
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do so we are enjoying life until we can
sustain ourselves as artivists.
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Shout outs to Chrystelyn and Kathryn new
subscribers to the channel. Thank you for
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subscribing. Kathryn and I were great
friends at University of Michigan and
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something that makes me so so happy is
when folks that I’ve done theater with
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long ago are still doing it. She’s an actor,
she’s done lots of TV. Check out her reel
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and her clips at her YouTube channel. Homegirl is working. She’s a
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working actor. OK so let’s work together,
let’s make things happen you all. Keep me
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posted. I’ll keep you posted. Have a
wonderful, wonderful week. Kicked butt.
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Work with women work. I am saying WORK WITH WOMEN. I’ll talk to you next week! Bye bye.
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.
