“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
So, hi there. It’s me. You may know me as ABL. Or, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, you may know me as Angry Black Lady. I also go by stopthemadness. (Why? Who can remember. It made sense at the time.)
Some of you may just reference me as “Ugh. Her.” In any event, my name is Imani Gandy and, after four years, I am coming out of the blogging closet. It was cramped in there, and I was getting hungry.
Of course this shift in my life has startled my personalities — they are all verrah confused — and I haven’t quite figured out which one of them will reign supreme.
While they duke it out, I’m going to call myself “stopthemadness aka ABL” over here; “ABL” over at Balloon Juice, and “Imani Gandy” over at The Grio.
Why? I don’t know. It makes sense at this time.
Moving on!
The purpose of this post is three-fold: (1) to announce that my inaugural non-pseudonymous post — “Black reverend preaches stereotypes to mostly white ‘South Central’ Tea Partiers” — over at TheGrio.com has been published; (2) to share some of the photos from my coverage of the South Central Tea Party rally; and (3) to share this outstanding comment on my post with you:
Clearly this writer Gandy, is no journalist. He/She couldn’t understand “context” if it were a condom over his/her head. 1st Patterson is absolutely correct in stating that the NAACP is no better than the KKK. Instead of hoods they hide behind lies and demagoguery. Instead of a noose they choke out black families by advocating that blacks remain poor, subjugated to the government. They brainwash blacks by telling them that education is only good and recognized if you are liberal. Gandy apparently can’t bring himself/herself to concede to Mr. Pattersons point regarding Planned Parenthood and abortion. The killing of 1500 babies a day in the black community via abortion is not a problem with Gandy… but lets not forget about the “wide range of health and family planning services” now that is something to write home about. That thinking is like saying Hitlers concentration camps weren’t so bad when you consider how well the German army was fed and dressed.
You social activist who hate America just can’t stand to watch Black Americans who actually love their country, who actually articulate conservative values, who actually dismiss the democrats plantation party and who actually believe in market economy and fiscal sanity. Gandy like, many others writing opinions here, are leftist white hating racists who want this country to be brought down to its knees and to be like every other third world country on the planet that their ancestors have proudly led. They are proud card carrying members of the NAACP. show less
Looks like I’ve maaaaaade it!
Yeah, that just happened, and I don’t know why because the lyrics are not appropriate at all. But, it’s the first thing that popped into my head, and if you know anything about me at all, it’s that I have little self-restraint.
It’s in my head and now it’s in yours.
You’re welcome.
[And now, the photo gallery. Apologies for the haphazard sizing. FYWP]
(Photo Credit: Danielle Cloutier)
[cross-posted at ABLC]
General Stuck
Cool name ABL. Kind of rolls off the tongue
Just Some Fuckhead
Damn, I was hoping you were gonna write about the tea party event.
JGabriel
Imani Gandy.
That is a beautiful name.
Then you had to go and wreck the good feelings with a Barry Manilow song, you… you… you lover of foul mid-tempo kitsch!
.
0whole1
> Cool name ABL. Kind of rolls off the tongue
That said, it’s no Kimberly Wymberly. :)
> the NAACP is no better than the KKK.
Minus, you know, killing people. And everything else.
Bostondreams
Wow. Those last couple lines in the comment to your piece really give away the whole game. Racist much?
kdaug
Cool name. I’ll still refer to you as ABL, though. I’m lazy, and it’s easier to type.
Rome Again
I agree with JSF, tell us more about the Tea Party.
“Democrats Plantation Party” – that’s really funny stuff, considering the people who were southern Dixiecrats ran to the Republican party. They are the very people they hate. How quaint!
Yutsano
I don’t remember that many white folk the last time I was in South Central.
dead existentialist
“verrah” confused . . . is that a Foxy Brown reference? If so, I could hug you, uh, Imani.
Comrade Kevin
@Just Some Fuckhead: She did, even provided a link to it in this post.
dead existentialist
South Central Tea Party? Oh, I get it. THAT kind of tea, amirite?
hamletta
Congratulations on the new gig, ABL…Ms. Gandy!
freelancer (iPhone)
Ms. I. Gandy,
You do inspire me. I too feel the need to shed my anonymity. My name is Nicholas Jones. You can find me through google. That’s right, wingnuts, do your worst. I’m not afraid!
<3,
freelancer
hamletta
“Democrats Plantation Party”
I don’t get that one, either. The GOP is really good at messaging, but that “plantation” business sounds so tin-eared and condescending. And I’m white.
I can’t imagine how it sounds to an African-American.
Nylund
So let me get this straight…the commenter says that black people, like all their ancestors, bring any country they lead to their knees…
And who again is the racist?
gwangung
Because they’re starting out and saying, “Negroes, you’re really not too smart. You can’t figure out who’s working in your best interests. Let ME, the Great White Father show you better.”
Cain
Can I just call you Mahatma? (Sorry someone had to say it) Of course you should take that as a compliment!
BTW I love the name Imani..
My First name is Sriram.. who is going to be the first to compliment me on my awesome, yet ancient name. Name is so old, it’s like those names from Depression era like “Polly”
Johnny Coelacanth
Welcome, Ms. Gandy. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, and congrats on your article at the Grio.
Craig
(Milhouse voice)
WHEN ARE WE GONNA GET TO THE ADULT ENTERTAINMENT SHOW?
Yutsano
@Cain:
You’re giving her a title already? :)
And I suppose we could go with Mohandas, but that’s a touch more obscure.
dead existentialist
@9 Self
Gahhhh!! I meant “Love,” “Foxy Love.”
Oye.
M. Bouffant
So the South Central T.P. took place at the Convention Center, which is south central downtown, not “South Central L.A.”
Turnout lower than the Beverly Hills T.P. I think there may have been more black folk at that one, actually.
Batocchio
Fucking analogies. How do they work?
According to social conservatives, slavery is preferable to being raised by a single parent (per the pledge Bachmann signed), and accepting help from the government is just as bad as being brutally murdered by a racist fuck. So, ya know, both sides do it ‘n’ all.
I know offensive, illogical, racist bullshit is par for the course with these assholes, but I retain my ability to be amazed by the crap they spew – mainly because they actually believe that this crap will win them converts.
Anyway, ABL, thanks for braving the crazies and getting the pics. Congratulations on the insane (and unintentionally hilarious) trolling.
andrewsomething
Re: the whole government aid subjugating its recipients. Here’s an excerpt of a fax sent to my rep today:
genghisjon
I’m really tierd of being told how much I “hate” america.I really would like to know why tea partiers are afraid of america.
Chuck Butcher
How you managed to not lose your mind surrounded by this horseshit is beyond me, because I’d have gotten … um … grouchy.
Brachiator
I don’t think the post is outstanding. It’s stupid and largely a waste of time. If a Ballon Juice troll had posted something like this, the responses would have been swift, deadly and accurate.
These Tea Party People are incredibly misinformed. But they are not shouting “segregation now, segregation forever.” I wonder what would happen if people sat down and talked to them instead of dismissing them as simple minded rackets.
W.E.B tried to warn black folk about reflexively voting for Republicans. He was dismissed as a crank until a Republican president nominated a former Klansman to the Supreme Court.
Democrats have largely and magnificently broken through the racist bullshit barrier. But the message still applies.
I live in California. I know the politicians who demonstrate the right stuff, and the ones who only show up in South Central when it is time to pander for votes.
And I also know that South Central was not an area where black folk freely chose to live, but a demographic red line where the oligarchs consigned blacks, with the connivance of people who considered themselves to be liberal.
So yeah, dump all over the Tea Party People. But don’t get too smug.
Skippy the Wondermule
You are my favorite blogger here at Balloon-Juice, you can call yourself anything you damn please.
Obviously, I allowed myself the same privilege :)
Cliff
1st Patterson is absolutely correct in stating that the NAACP is no better than the KKK.
That is fucking idiotic.
I’m too tired to say anything useful about the whole unmasking thing besides that I like the name.
MonkeyBoy
After your making fun of “Kymberly Wimberly”‘s name ,is “Imani” really your born name? (Your misspelling her as Kimberly led me to find many white girls named “Kimberly Wimberly” which I guess is considered cute).
I know in Swahili, “Imani” means “faith” but were your parents cool enough to name you that or did you adopt that name because they gave you something like “Mary” or “LaRamaLamaDingDong”.
Also from whence the last name “Gandy” – is that White? One source says it may be a Norman name meaning “glove maker” or “glove wearer”. Some of the clans in my heritage have the motto “Touch not the cat but a glove” (as anybody sane would do with Tunch) so maybe we are related or our ancestors had something to do with each other.
blackfrancis
ABGandy?
Nice comments you get over at the Grio. I should probably not get off the boat.
Sharl
@Brachiator: I didn’t take ABL’s post to be an expression of smugness, but rather a window on one aspect of how the powers that be work the levers and pull the strings. In this particular case, what is manifested is the power of confirmation bias as applied to the economically (and largely racially) privileged. The whole exercise wasn’t to win over black folk, but to keep economically affluent and (mostly) white folk feeling comfortable and – dare I say it – smug in their attitudes that there is no longer a race problem. After all, LOOK, its a black preacher dude saying the whole “race problem” is an invention of the NAACP! AND, we have a black President, so that proves there is no racism! So there.
I saw this in my own (white) family back in Ohio in 2004, where a number of my born again talibangelical kinfolk just lurved them some Ken Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State. Some of us did manage to notice that Mr. Blackwell was working hard to disenfranchise a lot of poor, urban voters, many of them of the melanin-enriched variety. But to my relatives, blinded by, and comfortable in their own privilege, he was doing Gawd’s work, and what with him being a black dude and all, how can you say he was doing wrong by “his own people”? Well, now, that would just be crazy talk – it wouldn’t make sense!
Same crap going on here. And such is the power inherent in the combination of privilege and the desire to not recognize one’s privilege – to acknowledge it is to invite discomfort and troubling thoughts – that ABL would have been fighting a steep uphill battle to try reasoning with folks in that particular environment. I’m personally familiar with The Privilege – it is a warm, comfy cocoon, with a whole set of institutional structures built up to sustain it.
Informative post, Ms. Gandy. Now that your lovely name is out in public, you be careful – lots of haterz out there who think the First Amendment is meant only for use by them and their fellow travelers.
Warren Terra
Beautiful name, but you’ll always be ABL.
Also, I can’t help but wonder whether if you were to attend another Tea Party rally (one that’s not set up outside a NAACP convention) you wouldn’t show up in a whole bunch of photos – because, by your mere presence at their rally, you prove the Teahaddists aren’t a bunch of racists.
Warren Terra
Oh, and this pissed me off:
I was at one of the rallies organized to demonstrate solidarity with Wisconsin workers at LA City Hall a couple months ago, and we had a lot more than 100 people in attendance (including a few dozen people who marched in support of abortion rights that ended at and joined the workers’ rights rally). And you can be damn sure there were a lot fewer than 20 members of the media in attendance.
TreeBeard
Since the L in ABL is *Lady* (or Laser?), she would be Kasturba and not Mohandas…
And one of my pet peeves on the grammar front is people who spell “Gandhi” as “Ghandi”. @#$%.
Villago Delenda Est
All you need to know about these disgusting people is that the “Democrats Plantation Party” is pure projection on their part. These people are inferior, so they feel a need to classify others as inferior. The thing is, the Teatards know instinctively that something is badly wrong with this country, but they manage, in a glorious confusion of cause and effect, to not see what the problem actually is…to side with the tiny minority of oligarchs who are bringing the entire thing down for their own short term gratification.
Egalitarianism, and a true meritocracy without regard to who your parents are, is the way out of this mess. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. This must happen. It’s the only way to bring about the stability that allows all to share in the prosperity we are capable of.
They’ve identified not with others who are struggling, but with the sociopaths who must feed, like a vampire, on the blood of the majority for both economic and emotional sustenance…people who cannot enjoy their meals without knowing that others are starving.
Nethead Jay
@MonkeyBoy: ABL said in a thread not too long ago that her real name meant Faith in Swahili, so I’d say, as you do, that her parents were cool enough to name her that. And I have to agree with all the others, beautiful name for a beautiful lady.
Interesting article too, congrats on the new gig ABL.
Dr. Squid
Who’s Patterson? The schmuck’s name is Jesse Lee Peterson. Guy’s just so important his followers can’t be bothered to get his name right.
Imani is a cool name. Good thing they didn’t name you Randy or Mandy.
ABL
Thanks all! I feel all nekkid and stuff.
if you read my article, you’ll see that i draw that conclusion. :)
Pat
Let me get this straight. The NAACP is now against black people?
There seems to be quite a bit of very scary, twisted and absolutely BACKWARDS thinking going on in America right now.
Just wow!
MonkeyBoy
@ABL:
My dear ABL (whom I will not touch but a glove). I hope whatever relation you have with Giro still allows you to crosspost here. From my brief trying to find an RSS feed it seems that I can only follow the whole site – not just what you write at http://www.thegrio.com/author/imani-gandy/
They don’t even segregate their feeds into channels like politics, so if I subscribe to the whole feed I will have to wade through all sorts of Black celebrity and lifestyle stuff (like HuffPost is polluted with the white analog) just to find you.
harlana
“Men Regret Lost Fatherhood”
Uh, yah, I’m sure they all do. Yep. (rolls eyes)
LarsThorwald
Wahoo wah.
Yevgraf
Not yet, anyway. It lurks barely under the surface, and given enough power and the clear playing field our liberal media will deliver, it wouldn’t take as long as you think.
It would be like talking to a wall. Rush and Fox News have done an outstanding job of operant conditioning.
harlana
Well, I just give up. I give up trying to figure out the whole debt ceiling crisis kabuki dance theatre play fuckbuzzle, whatever the fuck you want to call this madness. And so I couldn’t even begin to comprehend this Rev Patterson (Peterson?) business. It’s just exhausting to try and make sense of any of this anymore. I must accept reality, such as it is, and stop wondering if someone is spiking my iced tea with acid on a daily basis.
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Methinks she had a more important topic in mind.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
‘Cos you see, black people are the only ones who receive gubbermint moneys.
Thanks for going in there. I hope you went through a full decon process afterwards.
MattMinus
Oh boy, nutpicking in comments!Thats,like, the highest form of blogging or something, right?
Linda Featheringill
Does it matter that the German army was not well fed, largely because so much farm labor [male and female] was conscripted for army and war-based industry? Yeah, facts have a well-known liberal bias.
In other news . . . Congratulations Imani.
Nemesis
ABL,
How could you find your way in the throng of millions of baggers? Roads closed, hotels booked. What? There were 30 baggers there? Nevermind.
And assuming you are in fact AA, how did the baggers react to your presence? They aint too keen on yer kind.
gnomedad
Also, the Anti-Defamation League is no better than Hitler, except instead of killing Jews it encourages them to be all whiny about a little name-calling.
Linda Featheringill
@gnomedad:
I had to laugh out loud at that one!
gnomedad
@gnomedad:
Sorry, @owhole1, forgot the attribution. Bloody invisible reply button.
Marc
Good article. Maybe some of the critics here could, you know, read it. Might learn something.
Dilford
When do we find out “John Cole”‘s real name, huh?
As I skipped reading the comments of yr most troll-attracting posts from a while back, I was just wondering if the vitriol level here ever got as intense as the level of some of theGrio comments? I do love the fact that you seem to have plenty of commenters over there that already have yr back.
The Reverend reminds me of no-one so much as David Mamet with his born-again conversion to conservatism. It’s an attraction to the “principles” of conservative thought while studiously ignoring the actualities of Republican policies.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Yuck. I hate when fRighties share their fetishes.
kay
Hi Amani, and congrats on your new(est) job.
I enjoyed your piece over at the other site. What I would ask the woman who feels let down by government is this: what is stopping her from acting individually, outside government, to change the things she objects to that affect her on a personal level, individually?
If she is indeed a Tea Party-libertarian person, is there something holding her back from moving to a different school district, or taking some other individual action (which is, after all, what her chosen ideology is all about)? Why does she have to dismantle government to get there, if the whole point of her ideology is that she’s going it alone? Wouldn’t it be entirely in keeping with her beliefs and values to make her own individual California dream-lifestyle? Is she saying she can’t do that as long as Rick Perry isn’t President? Well, she’s a libertarian, right? Isn’t that an inherent contradiction? She needs conservative governance at the federal level or she can’t operate individually outside government, sans federal subsidies or help? What’s stopping her?
gocart mozart
If “context” were a condom over my head, I wouldn’t quite understand it either. In fact, I would find the situation rather odd and would likely suffer great psychic consternation and trepidation.
Ben Cisco
Congrats Amani, love the post.
__
By the by, my “conversation” with Kensley Stewart (or someone claiming to be him) on the Twitterz is done. I simply cannot reply to him any further. I found it to be pretty much the same thing as you have documented here. I was going to write a blog post about it, but to be honest, the experience was too mind-numbing for me to want to put anyone else though. Thank you for stepping up and taking one for Team Sane America.
Tyro
ABL, I just want to say that the end of the article on the “South Central Tea Party” hit me right in the gut.
I was all ready to get all indignant and self-righteous at what a farce it all was, but quoting from that local attendee just made me feel sad and worried.
Ash Can
Imani Gandy at The Grio. Wow. I feel like this messy but comfy little dump here has really hit the big time. I’d better go put some decent clothes on.
Seriously, though, great article. It must have been depressing to witness all that. Ugh. And the term “minstrel show” in this context really strikes me. Spot on.
Libby
Happy coming out day Imani.
permazorch
Whatever your name, your essays are keen and I’m so glad you write.
ABL, Imani or stopthemadness (a timeless moniker, that last), please improve your twitter comments.
MomSense
Congrats on many things ABL–thegrio, the sharing of your beautiful name, and the being brave enough to swim at the low end of the gene pool in order to bring us the story!
rikyrah
Jessie Lee is the epitome of a slave catcher.
Have you ever heard him speak?
it’s like, when Black folks accuse the media, in times of tragedy, of going out and finding the most ignorant Black person ever to put on tv.
that person is Jessie Lee.
you rock ABL
BalJu Commenter #2401
I always get you confused with Gani Imandy. ;)
c u n d gulag
You’ve come out – welcome!
OK, well, not ‘that’ kind of out…
I love you, and don’t change, whatever you decide to call yourself.
Ah, where’s Richard Pryor when you need him?
Can you imagine what he’d do with today’s political and racial world, black President, and the reaction to him, and everyhting else going on?
George Carlin, too.
Oh, and Hunter S. Thompson.
TaMara (BHF)
ABL, aka Imani – thanks for sharing your identity, as well as your thoughts. You make me laugh, you make me think, and the commenters who seem to attack you for no other reason than your are full of fire and spirit (ok, might have something to do with your gender and ethnicity) bring out the full clawed mama tiger in me, no matter how I try to reign her in.
Shinobi
Man, those kids holding the anti-NAACP signs make my bleeding liberal heart bleed a little faster. I hate the tea party.
Also, That Patterson guy needs to work on his history.
karen marie
TaMara (BHF): I second your comment, except it’s “rein” not “reign.”
kthnxbai!
Samara Morgan
wow, that is an ubercool name.
you could be a bollywood megastar or a supermodel with that name.
your parents must be mighty.
The Moar You Know
ABL: Excellent piece. It manages to be enraging, comical, but most of all heartbreaking.
Ben Cisco
Here is my Conversation With A Tea Partier.
Poopyman
Imani…. Love the name, but at my age change is hard, and I’m lazy. I might still be calling you ABL. I guess we’ll see.
Thanks for documenting the Tea Party doings. Almost called it “madness”, which would have rationalized away their beliefs. I need to get my outrage recharged, because they’re hitting us on all fronts these days, hoping for an overwhelming victory. Can NOT happen!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Kevin: Thanks, I missed that.
Paul in KY
Great article at The Grio, Imani. Best wishes on a long career in journalism.
RalfW
@16 ~ Well of course, the massive destruction of wealth in the black community in the past three years, documented by the Pew Foundation, is the fault of Democrats and liberals.
Um, wait, isn’t that what the link says???
Frankensteinbeck
RalfW:
As distasteful as it is to emulate this kind of thinking, let me explain why a conservative can make this data fit their propaganda. Their most popular explanation for the crash is that it was caused by shiftless minorities taking out loans they couldn’t afford to purchase homes. Home ownership is a whopping element of net worth, and is the difference you see in those charts. Lots and lots of whites own a home (itself at least 75k of net worth) and very few minorities do. Before the crash more minorities owned homes, but the net worth was illusory because they were irresponsible purchases – and when the crash came they lost those homes. At that point the net worth figures went back to where they were before the government pressured innocent banks into offering these doomed loans.
I take absolutely no responsibility for the line of reasoning above. I’m just trying to explain how the modern hate-filled narcissist conservative thinks when he has enough brain cells to put together a good rationalization. Pardon me while I go take a shower.
John Weiss
I, you make me almost proud to be a human.
Anarcho-Syndicalist Communes Now!
Happy Unmasking Day ABL and Conga Rats on the Grio gig!
The Teahadis are just shameless. The whole traveling circus of the South Central Bay Tea Party to meet outside the Convention Center is as sad as it is infuriating. The white attendees of this farce believe, I can’t say think, they are ‘speaking truth to empowered’ to just join the ‘post-racial’ US of A like good little folk and forget all this hurtful propaganda (either the NAACP’s or their own, I don’t know).
Jesse Lee Patterson is just an enigma. Is he doing the typical conservative grift along with the religious grift? Does he believe any of his BS?
Dee Loralei
Great article and beautiful name, Imani. And congrats again about the gig at theGriot.
kc
Congrats! And Imani is a lovely name.
Brachiator
@Sharl:
You raise many great points.
I think it’s a lot simpler than this, but you hit on part of it. A lot of Tea Party People do not want to give up any of the self-serving myths that they believe about America. And of course, a lot of Tea Party People are not particularly “privileged” economically, which makes a lot of their denial and confusion all the more tragic, since a lot of powerful people are using them like tissues to be discarded when their usefulness at the ballot box is done.
@ABL:
It’s on my todo list for later today. Good stuff.
Rick Massimo
Wait for it …
Wait for it …
Any second now …
THERE ya go! “Democrats and liberals are the real racists, and if n*##@rs weren’t so stupid and lazy they’d realize that!”
Happens every time. Bonus points for “when will they wise up and realize that only white people are fit to lead?”
If only.
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brantl
Mattminus, still an inveterate douchebag.
simon
Monkeyboy… sigh… you are such a gutter fuck.