Urban Marketing: The Distinction Between "Good Black Folks" vs. The Other Kind

by today’s Urban Chameleon contributor

A few weeks into my gig at a famous vodka company that shall remain nameless, I was finally beginning to learn the language. I had learned that it was good to use the words "luxury," "authenticity," and "aspirational," especially when describing your own work. It was bad to use the words "Jello shot," "cheap," and "drunk." You weren’t drunk from doing too many cheap Jello shots, you were savoring the value-priced edible cocktails.

Whenever the topic of “urban” marketing came up, everyone seemed suddenly uncomfortable. Voices shifted upwards in pitch and speech became more deliberate. I had no idea why everyone was so nervous about selling vodka in cities.

One day, in a Power Point presentation, it all became clear. With our “urban marketing approach,” we were still supposed to “align ourselves with luxury brands” to make our famous vodka seem more expensive and exclusive. Therefore putting the bottle next to a $5,000 strand of Mikimoto earrings would create that illusion despite the fact that our vodka was available at any liquor store for $35.

The next slide showed a Blair Underwood lookalike in an expensive suit, drinking a martini in his loft apartment. Again I could hear in my boss’s voice that same tentative, apologetic quality that came up whenever we discussed “the urban market.” The kind of voice people use to talk about something unpleasant that you’d rather not bring up, like gay bashing or slavery.

“Let’s make this very clear,” he said. “We market to the elite urban consumer, not just any urban consumer.”

Everyone nodded in approval. The next slide showed several light-skinned Black women in a restaurant, drinking cosmos over brunch.

Holy shit! Urban meant Black! Or people of color anyway; one of the women on the brunch slide looked kind of Dominican. I was in a room of all white people, and my boss was saying that we didn’t want just any Black people to drink our vodka. It had to be the right kind of Black people. The kind that seemed not to be a threat.

The next slide showed P Diddy in front of a Ciroc step and repeat.

“Just look at Puff Daddy and Ciroc,” said my boss. “That is so unluxury.”

A murmur of derision went around the room as my colleagues expressed their disdain towards Diddy.

As a white woman, I was more than uncomfortable with this setting. It was a world I tried my hardest to be a chameleon but eventually became exhausted by the limited exposure these people had the nerve to be marketing to in addition to my mandatory weekly hair and makeup appointments trying to get me to fit in. I finally quit after a consultation with their stylist who said to me, “I see you wear big earrings, they bring attention up here.” She waved her hand around my face, insinuating there was something wrong with it. Continuing she said, “But what I’d like you to do is start wearing larger necklaces to bring the focus to your best feature.” She then gestured to my bosom.

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#Redtails and the Big Guilt Trip Scam

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

I am so sick and tired of going to see a Black film out of charity. Every time a Black film is released the word “support” is not far behind, and George Lucas’s latest project featuring an all Black cast, Red Tails is no exception. Black people everywhere were dumb founded that Mr. Star Wars himself could not get Hollywood on board to make his $(93) ninety-three million dollar film; a story about the Tuskegee Airmen. Thus the campaign tagline for Red Tails was solidified, “Support This Black Film!”

The media roll out plan was perfect; as the exposed plight of Lucas’ fired people up to get their “activism” on by posting articles, Facebook Status Updates and Tweets reiterating the importance of “supporting” this Black film. The results lead to a successful $(20) twenty-million dollar opening weekend. It almost felt like there was more patriotism displayed for Lucas than there was for Troy Davis. Regardless, we did it! We showed Hollywood, and therefore can expect more films about the Black experience coming soon to a theater near you. Right? Wrong!

Do you know how many Black films have done “surprisingly” well over the last twenty years at less than a fraction of the cost of Red Tails? Are we not still having the same damn conversations about Hollywood not making Black films? Let alone ones that are diverse? (See article: All We Do is Eat, Fight, F*ck, Dance and Pray.) Is Hollywood all of a sudden going to start churning out $(100) one-hundred million dollar Black pictures?

I don’t think so.

Spike Lee can’t even get 40 acres and a mule. Hate to burst the bubble, but Hollywood is predominately ran by white men who don’t understand Black people; even though they swear they do. In pitch meetings, Hollywood executives are quick to state why a Black film won’t do well (welcome to the pity party Lucas) and include statistics about the ones that have failed. Even though these statistics are smaller than a pubic hair compared to the number of white films that fail year after year. The reality is, “Black” cannot possibly represent a universal experience and Hollywood won’t invest. Instead of continuing to knock on the same door that doesn't want to let you in, build a new house. With all the technology at our finger tips why not start investing in new distribution models and tell Hollywood to kiss your Black ass!

So why did I end up seeing Red Tails if it wasn’t to send a message to Hollywood? One word, GUILT.  All the Facebook updates had me feeling like I was a sell out, Anti-Black, if I didn’t see it opening weekend and support an important story about Black History. There was just one problem...Red Tails has no story, at least not the one that their PR team is pimping. I walked away with no real understanding of who the Tuskegee Airmen were and what made them exceptional. It’s not enough to show scenes where a white man either calls or treats the Black man like a nigger to validate storytelling. In fact, there was more of an emphasis on the Tuskegee Airmen blowing up the enemy than there was on a fight for equality.

At the end of the day, I knew from the moment I first saw the trailer that this wasn’t a film I wanted to see. Regardless if you agree or not, shouldn't I have that freedom of choice?

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"Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls" Rocks the Boat!

by Funnel Cake Flowers the Urban Chameleon news reporter

Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls is one of the latest videos to take the Internet by storm, having been viewed by over 4 million in less than a week. The creator, Franchesca Ramsey, a young, dark skin, Black woman with locs throws on a blond wig and goes IN, reenacting remarks made by “white girls”. At first I was bewildered by the sensation of this video.

This isn’t news. Is it? My friends of color and I were used to these same ignorant or shall I say ign’t comments made about our race (including African America, Asian, Latino, Indian, etc)…from another race. But then I realized that our kitchen table conversations are rarely up for discussion on a platform with global reach, so this was news for many. Despite the familiarity of the subject, most of my Black girl friends find the video hysterical... truth that resonates tends to do that. Meanwhile, a lot of non-Black girls aren’t laughing. (Not all, as some have openly admitted that they act like the girl in the video) but one person even went off on a rant after being insulted by the line about Jews. (Now ya know you cannot talk about Jews!)

Oftentimes things go viral but the message gets missed. If you’ve read Franchesca Ramsey’s interview in the Huffington Post it reveals that the video is based on TRUTH! Come on people (who were insulted), ya kinda can't deny someone's truth no matter how insulted you are and quite frankly this is a truth that needs addressing. Unfortunately, if you’re not familiar with how many of us “Black girls” REALLY CAN RELATE to Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls in our own interracial relationships you think the actor, Franchesca Ramsey is the one that started this fight.

If anything, Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls is a testament to the lack of perspective with in the media regarding people of color. Both parties maybe to blame for this. White friends of mine have told me that white people don’t like talking about race and especially NOT slavery. And lawd knows Black people are conscious of what white people think so don't always say what they really want to say. But if we don’t start talking  about it we’re only continuing this cycle of everyone either being misunderstood or insulted. So what now?

Regardless of your race, if someone says some ignorant sh*t, CALL THEM OUT (without getting physical or stank...cause that's just ign't.) As Urban Chameleons we sometimes tend to fear the consequences and chameleon into silence. But part of being an Urban Chameleon is helping someone else to become one…by exposing them to your truth so that the next time they encounter someone like you they won't say some ignorant shit and real conversation can begin.

Have a story you want to me to report? E-mail me at funnelcakeflowers@tickles.tv

Creator of Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls on Anderson Cooper

Herman Cain: “The Martin Luther King Values” candidate for president?

Funnel Cake Flowers, The Urban Chameleon news reporter comments on the latest attempts to compare Herman Cain with Martin Luther King. Are they more similar than we realize?
contributing Urban Chameleon writer: Lauren Brown

Not since Edward Brooke have Black Republicans done well as political office holders. The hit-it and quit-it ouster of Michael Steele reveals that the Black man has an even shorter life expectancy in the GOP than the time in between the use of the “N” word in a Quentin Tarantino film. Statistics like these beg the question of how well Republican’s newest Negro, Herman Cain, will continue to perform on the national stage. Many have said that Cain could be our nations first REAL Black president suggesting that he certainly seems to share more attributes with our beloved civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, with of course the exception of not participating in the civil rights.

Like Dr. King, Herman Cain attended Morehouse College. Both King and Cain have started influential movements. For Dr. King, Civil Rights, for Herman Cain, the Intelligent Thinkers movement. But the most damning and glaring commonality these two share? Both Republicans??? According to the National Black Republicans Association hey are claiming King as one of their own.

One might now wonder if Dr. King would have supported Cain’s controversial 9-9-9 plan? To date, Dr. King is the only citizen to be prosecuted under the Georgia income tax perjury statute. Which means 9-9-9, would have saved him a world of legal bills. But here is where it gets interesting; Dr. King was also born in 1929, it was 9 years, between the time he was asked to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott and when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover, Herman Cain and Martin King each have 10 letters in their first and last names and what is 10-1? 9!

999!!!

But is being Morehouse graduates and using complicated math involving the number 9 enough to say that these two Black men are similar? Or has the Republican Party put a DJ Funk Master Flex remix on this beat?

Yes both men stress the importance of dreaming but to Cain I say, dream on brotha. I know one thing is for sure, it’s complicated. I’m Funnel Cake Flowers, your Urban Chameleon news reporter from Tickles.TV

E-mail Funnel Cake Flowers a news story at funnelcakeflowers@tickles.tv

The Fem-Urban Chameleon: Celebrating Anita Hill

It’s one thing to transition into corporate America—from its private grade school classrooms, ivy league universities, corporate boardrooms and social climbing ladders—back out into our bilingual/patois/urban slang speaking, hip winding, kinky hair handling and curry spice eating America. (See How the Urban Chameleon Came to be…) But it’s another layer to be a woman juggling another set of balls (pun intended) in a male dominated world. Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, an iconic voice and activist in the feminist movement so eloquently talked with our Urban Chameleon news reporter, Funnel Cake Flowers, about why men think the “Penis is powerful.” Twenty years ago Anita Hill challenged that “penis power” by filing sexual harassment charges on Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas. Although the court ruled in favor of Thomas, the case opened the floodgates for women from different backgrounds to unveil their own experiences with navigating sexual harassment – exposing an international crisis and modern day awareness.

A Thank-You Note to Anita Hill

Letty Cottin Pogrebin • October 5, 2011

Anita Hill, I want to personally thank you for what you did for us twenty years ago. Thank you for speaking up and speaking out. Thank you for your quiet dignity, your eloquence and elegance, your grace under pressure. Thank you for illuminating the complexities of female powerlessness and for explaining why you didn’t complain when the offense first occurred, and for describing how cowed and coerced a woman can feel when she’s hit upon by a man who controls her economic destiny.

Twenty years ago you had the courage to tell the truth and do what women rarely did: make a scene. Fifty years ago I didn’t. In the 1960s, when I was a book publishing executive, single and self-supporting, I once was trapped in an elevator with an important and powerful male journalist whose good offices I depended on to give favorable coverage to my company’s books. With absolutely no warning, the man suddenly pinned me against the elevator wall, groped my breasts and shoved a hand under my skirt. Did I press the emergency button?

Of course not; it would have caused a scene. A scene would have imperiled my career. A scene would have marked me as a prude, a troublemaker and that grimmest of all characters, A Girl With No Sense of Humor. A scene would have infuriated and embarrassed the man. A scene might have made the papers, exposing his crude and thuggish behavior to his wife. In the end, the person who would pay a price for his humiliation would be me. He would bad-mouth me in the industry. He would give my company bad press, which in turn would reflect negatively on my work and put my job at risk.

That’s why, instead of screaming, I giggled while I fought him off. I spewed wisecracks as I twisted out of his grasp. I tried to keep smiling while frantically stabbing the L button. Finally, the elevator doors opened, and I made a run for the street. It wasn’t the first or the last time that I escaped an unwanted sexual advance and ended up feeling sullied, scared, cowardly and somehow at fault. Far worse happened to friends of mine and to hundreds of thousands of other working women.

But thanks to you, Anita, we and our daughters and our granddaughters now feel empowered to press the emergency button and report offensive behavior. Thanks to your brave, frank testimony and your stately comportment in the face of hostile interrogation and vilification, we no longer laugh off unwanted sexual advances; we file charges. We no longer protect our attackers from humiliation; we name names. We demand that our employers be accountable to their policies against harassment and that the offender be punished. We may still be risking our jobs, but more and more of us are telling the truth.

It all started with you, Anita. And today we remember and honor what you did. We thank you for making a scene—for doing it fearlessly before the eyes of a riveted nation and inspiring millions of women to defend their dignity as you did yours.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine and a past president of the Authors Guild and Americans for Peace Now, is the author of nine books, including Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (Anchor), and Three Daughters, her first novel (Penguin).

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This article appeared in the October 24, 2011 edition of The Nation.

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Troy Davis: Why should I march in 2011 for social injustice? ?

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

A friend asked me to come out and join a community gathering for Troy Davis at the Martin Luther King Jr., National Historic Site on Auburn Ave in Atlanta. His message read, "Can we count on you to join us in support of brotha Troy Davis and say a few words?" Not being all that familiar with the case, I did my due diligence and looked up the history of this "brotha" from another mother. I couldn't believe how out of the loop I had been. I had more unwanted knowledge about Beyonce's pregnancy and Kim Kardashian's wedding, than this life or death issue. Why had Troy Davis' story not made it to any of my news outlets or social circles until now? It didn't feel right summarizing my crash research into a forceful manipulation of the "right words" for the following day's march... my heart wasn't there. But why did I feel so guilty about deciding not to attend? For the next couple of days I analyzed how I could be so heartless, especially when someone's life was on the line.

A few days later, during a conversation about modern day activism, another friend revealed she too had declined the same invitation. The more we talked, the more we were able to flesh out the reasoning behind our discomfort. Our choice was not about not wanting to help, but rather how we were asked to help. To us marching today seemed antiquated, inauthentic of who we are and how we view the world in our 30sumptin' years of age. Even though we are the offspring of a generation of marchers, media and technology had mentally forged us into a new ideology that seemed to disconnect us from our parents, so much so that we couldn't possibly fathom holding up a home made sign with the same slogans from the
civil rights movement. The wording on the invitation I received was even bothersome. Theoretically, I understood the significance of using familiar "Black community" buzzwords like "Brotha" and the choice of location, the famous Auburn Avenue, in attempt to remind us of our struggle and retain the importance of community. However, the sentiment instead felt manipulative and presumptuous; because I'm a conscious sista, I'm expected to arrive with my Afro pick, Black power fist, and theme music of NWA's, "F*ck the police" to stand in support. I was never even asked my position on the issue. What if I
had showed up and spoke in support of the police officer?

This was not the first time that I had witnessed community leaders organize without doing their due diligence. More infatuated with the nostalgia of the civil rights movement, than they are in challenging themselves and the community with innovative thinking relative to the world we live in today in order to create real change. Even the tactics used during the civil rights movement were innovative for the time period, Rosa Parks not giving up her seat was also planned and connected to a strategy. These key elements made a world of difference. The consensus of our group conversation was that being asked to join a demonstration with no plan or the same plan from forty years ago has the same annoyance of
receiving multiple random requests to 'like' someone's fan page on Facebook.

I recently met a white woman who runs a social media company with a unique activist approach; instead of helping to build houses in Haiti she decided to travel a small group of bloggers to the distraught destination. She told me about how a person was appalled by the trip because they didn't consider it to be real "change" work. Her position was to do what she does best to broadcast the unknown stories from Haiti to draw further support. The point is marching is not the only form of activism.

Even though I didn't march on the street for Troy Davis, at the end of the day I was thankful for the invite to participate as it ultimately broadened my awareness of a crucial matter; a man scheduled for execution after being accused of shooting a cop with out any apparent evidence. I chose to instead display my activism through my own voice, which is to find ways that inspire people like myself, who also don't speak "march for my rights", to think of other ways to activate their activism. I realized that it's not marching that I have a problem with, but rather the loss of creativity that inspires why we should march.

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Witnessing President Barack Obama dedicating the final Capitol Mall monument ever to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

In exactly one week, I'll be witness to President Barack Obama dedicating the final Capitol Mall monument ever to Dr. Martin Luther King. Am readying myself, my family, for next week's road trip retracing of the "March on Washington" journey to DC. What a moment in history.

Next step in preparing for our journey will be educating my daughter about the bravery, humanity and transformational outcomes of the efforts of Dr. King (and the warrior spirit of the team around him and before him) will be the viewing of "Citizen King." This excellent History Channel documentary can be purchased on line. Though she enters her second year of study at Columbia, I am pretty sure she has had little more than a "I have a dream" recitation leading up to MLK holiday. Shame on me.

An unplanned step in our Monument trip preparation was viewing "The Help" last week. Even in this Disney-sanitized story, the film reminded me of just how recent and prevalent post-slavery residues of African American powerlessness, disposability and airtight economic / educational prospects were in America. These systemic caste constructs weren't limited to deep South Mississippi, nor were they carried out by a few bad people as a film would suggest. These airtight practices of race-based discrimination in education, housing, voting rights, public accommodations, legal redress, economic exclusion, etc. were, in fact, the way of the nation / the law of the land (had it not been, the decades long resistance would not have been necessary). To borrow a metaphor from "The Help," African American existence was a daily shit pie. Having been born in 1958, it is amazing to ponder of all of the hard fought change that has been brought forth in my lifetime.

I will be internalizing Dr. King's role in galvanizing our nation and government to see and be its better self ...despite its history. I've been pondering the greatest post-ceremony homage I can pay to the many who, over the decades and in their own ways, cleared a path for a better America and extending the laws of the land to "all God's children." This is what I have come up with:

-I will remember that that it is always the right time to do the right thing
-I will vote (continue to)
-I will look at my world, "have a dream" ...and take steps towards bringing it to pass
-I will remain informed about the human inequities in my time, my community, my world ...and engage with my voice to remedy them
-I will help in my own way those who might be bettered by my efforts
-I will believe that change is possible and that my world can be a better place
-I will celebrate the promise / possibility of young people and the content of their character

What will YOU do, my friend?

To those who, since we arrived in this land, stood, who fought, who merely endured somehow, you many unheralded and mostly nameless souls are as also remembered and celebrated.

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