Redbone Afropuff and Black GRITS

When man-made laws protect us from bad faith

Miss Mariam — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:00:56 +0000

Because faith is so personal, I try to avoid looking at it objectively or commenting on religions that are not my own. Additionally, I readily admit I’m not a scholar of one or of many religions. I read and study the Christian Bible because I’m a Christian and I believe my personal walk with Christ [...]

Movies aren’t miracles

Miss Mariam — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:00:37 +0000

I have long believed that film has the ability to change the world. I wrote in my 2002 and 2004 applications to graduate schools in film and dramatic writing that I wrote scripts “with the intent to provoke a time of serious comtemplation in the life of everyone who heard [my words].” I believed that [...]

Words matter to equality

Miss Mariam — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:23:00 +0000

The BBC reports that Cesson-Sevigne, a town in France, has banned “Mademoiselle” as a form of addressing women. Noting that “men of all ages become ‘monsieur’ as soon as they grow out of shorts,” the town’s mayor, who ran on a platform of sexual equality, and feminists who support him say there should be one [...]

Another “F” voice emerges in 2012

Miss Mariam — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:10:54 +0000

I can’t control what people think of me as a person or as a writer, but some emails I’ve received since my last C-J editorial indicate misperceptions may abound. So, I want to start Redbone Afropuff’s year with a few clarifications: I’m pro-choice. I don’t believe in promise rings. I meant what I said when [...]

Looking for Plan B: An open letter to girls

Miss Mariam — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:00:48 +0000

To a 16-year-old girl who wants to buy Plan B-One over the counter: Someone in the Obama administration you’ve probably never even heard of made an unprecedented decision concerning you last week. U.S. Health and Human Services Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decided that Plan B One-Step, which you probably know as the “morning after pill,” [...]

Pick your paternalism poison

Miss Mariam — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:09:46 +0000

In his column, “America’s obsession with missing white women,” Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts asserts that the incessant news coverage of the latest young, pretty missing white woman is a “back-handed compliment” and the latest form of a “certain condescending paternalism” that casts white women as helpless damsels in need of rescue or of protection. I [...]

Baby do or baby don’t?

Miss Mariam — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Story #1: Educated, career-oriented American women falsely assume they can easily conceive children when they’re in their 40s. Story #2: An unemployed, probably uneducated and possibly bipolar American woman easily conceives and bares 15 children with 3 different men and then demands that the state take care of them. I read, listened to [...]

Let the hate show

Miss Mariam — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:58:04 +0000

When I read yesterday that Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church, a church in my lovely state of Kentucky, voted to ban interracial couples from its congregation, I thought, “So much for post-racial America.” While I was appalled, shook my head, and joined in with the “And they call themselves Christians,” chorus, I felt some vindication for [...]

Where the War on Drugs Meets the War on Women

Miss Mariam — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:34:15 +0000

“Planters care for nothing but to buy Negroes to raise cotton & raise cotton to buy Negroes.” –an unnamed southerner to northerner Edward Russell c. 1854 Dr. Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, teaches civil rights advocates to be on the lookout for the next movement [...]

Note to Gordon Gekko: Greed really isn’t good

Miss Mariam — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:13:50 +0000

I feel like I should start whatever this piece of writing is going to be with a disclaimer similar to the lyrics that begin Prince’s song, “1999.” I’m not dreaming, and I’m not in an altered state of consciousness, but I do write this in a fog of news stories, live images, quotes by [...]