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10.26.2010

It Was All a Dream: Storytelling as Mechanism for Nation Building (original speech)

Again, thanks to everyone who attended and/or watched my closing address at the Act Six National Convention 2010! It was a great honor and privilege to be with and speak to so many young talented and passionate leaders. Three months later, the connections I made and live positive energy I felt are still in progress! I want to keep it going and maybe even take it in new directions by sharing some of my process in developing the speech.
Some of you may know that the speech I delivered that Saturday morning was written the night before in the heat of passion and inspiration. Rather than joining capture the flag out on the dimly lit college campus with the rest of the youngin's I retired to my hotel room to write. Not because I wanted to-- I'm just as big of a kid as Act Six National Director Tim Herron, but it was because I had to. I was feeling something that was so strong in me and I knew I had to respond or else the next morning was going to be me on stage delivering "an okay speech" with some admirable insights about culture that I managed to nervously stumble through, but also one of my biggest regrets. That night I felt something pulling me toward the transparency and vulnerability and away from the academic language and philosophical theory that I had planned to deliver (see below). That energy was a product of the Act Six network, not the idea, but the individuals who came together to share their hearts and be inspired. They were counting on me to capture their energy and power and summarize it using the context of my own ideas and experiences. I knew what I had written was not fit for such a job. So I got to work. I scribbled some notes about 5 leadership commandments (5 more coming soon!) and the rest just came together from there.
I am very proud of the final product but I think the process is just as important. I also think I came across some interesting ideas and facts that didn't make it into the taped speech so I hope you take away something from these notes as well. I'd appreciate any comments, questions, suggestions and of course stories!
IT WAS ALL A DREAM: Storytelling as a Mechanism for Nation Building
Whether or not you are a participant in hip-hop culture, listen to the music, or even care at all about the state of hip-hop, it’s nearly impossible to be unaware of the debate which culminated with the release of Nas’ single, “Hip-Hop is Dead.”
If you, like Nas, were born in urban American in 1965-1984, you are considered a part of the hip-hop generation. Most of you in this room are like me, born 1985 and after, and would be considered a part of what M.K. Asante Jr. calls the “post- hip-hop generation.”
Born in 1985, I feel very much caught between these two generational identities. Fortunately, I’m used to being caught in the middle. I would compare my relationship to hip-hip to my identity in general.
My father is black and my mother is white. I identify as mixed-race. Like the current president of our country, I recognize that much of America still operates on the one-drop rule of blackness, but frankly, Mr. Obama would be considered a part of the hip hop generation and naturally prescribes to a more “old school” view of racial identity. I understand the need to recognize and be proud of my blackness, but I also believe our country is on the verge of a new perspective on race identity. Like the hip-hop identity, I feel race identity is shifting as the lines between whose “in” and who’s “out” have become blurred.
Back to hip-hop; many of those who embrace the identity of the hip-hop generation are very critical of the current state of hip-hop.  Some say that rap, hip-hop’s central asset, has drifted into the shallowest pool of lyrical possibilities and that the latest version of hip-hop betrays the attitudes and ideals that framed it. But most significantly, commercialization has resulted in many young blacks who belong to the hip-hop generation feeling misrepresented by it. They no longer feel hip-hop is keeping its promise of authenticity, liberation and rebellion.
Though, they may not agree with the direction, the hip hop generation must admit that “post hip-hop” offers a fresh set of attitudes, ideas, and perspectives.
The reality is this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum and you can see a shift it in every aspect of our society from technology, to religion, careers, relationships and even sports.
Think about Lebron. And I don’t even mean all the varying perspectives on his recent “Decision.” People want to compare him to Jordan and other players from the past who have separated themselves based on pure talent, but it’s a whole different ball game these days, so to speak.  LeBron is a business man. His financial success is made possible because of those who paved the way before him, but not many of those people entered the game at his age with his mindset because what he is accomplishing was never thought possible. Whether or not it’s actually possible now, the upcoming generation of athletes, rappers and entrepreneurs from the inner-city is not thinking millions, but billions; not national, but international.
In 30 years of hip-hop, we went from young black and Latino guys mixing break beats  and rhyming along in their grandmother’s basement to 17 year-olds getting major record deals from uploading their music and gaining a respectable fan base on social networking sites like MySpace. Of course the lyrics and the fans have changed. The argument is always whose “hip hop” is better and can we even call the new stuff by the same name?
One question I ask when given a chance to be a part of a dramatic shift is always, what elements are we responsible for preserving?
To me the answer is simple: imagination and a mechanism for storytelling that gives voice to the voiceless. Hip-hop is special because like its predecessors within the American tradition, from negro spirituals, to gospel, jazz, blues, bebop and rock n’ roll, it gives voice to disenfranchised people.
Philosopher/social critic A. Shahid Stover takes a more radical view, stating that “Hip hop culture when resolutely cultivated, potentially serves as a redemptive artistic and intellectual vantage point from which the socio-politically oppressed, the culturally marginalized… the globally dispossessed, the racially outcast… the wretched of the earth… can critically engage an oppressive society.”
It’s hard to argue that hip hop itself is not plagued with the same tools of oppression found in the larger society, such as homophobia, materialism, and misogyny. In hip hop scholar Michael Eric Dyson’s opinion, “People are right to demand that criticism, to demand that responsibility, but not to be unfairly critical… sometimes people demand too much of hip hop.” Part of the reason, he believes, is the success of hip hop.
By way of globalization and localization, hip hop has traveled far from its birthplace of late 1970’s Bronx New York and can now be found in its many forms everywhere from Oakland, California to South Africa and Israel-Palestine.  National Geographic recognizes hip hop as “the world’s favorite youth culture” in which “just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene.”
In my opinion, though MC’ing, DJ’ing, B-boying/girling, and graffiti writing are respectable in their own right, my main concern is not the preservation of specific elements of hip-hop, but rather what they represents. These days we have krumping, jerking, spoken word, and school-age kids broadcasting their own youtube videos.  Are these not signs that the next generation is engaging in exploration, challenge and discovery—acts that will result in a revelation of contemporary truths that will help define us, and in turn, the world?
The late Martinician writer, Frantz, Fanon once said, “each generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover their destiny and either fulfill or betray it.”
As I mentioned before, I’m no stranger to obscurity, but when I became a part of the first cadre of Act Six scholars at Whitworth; the first college to implement the program, it may have been my first experience with a collective journey into murky waters.
Armed with Acts Chapter 6 as our weapon of manifest destiny, my 9 peers and I entered the Act Six campus eager to engage as leaders and “agents of change.”
We were all from urban Tacoma and grew up with at least some Christian influence, but we were a relatively diverse group and the foundations of our identity were tied to an eclectic array of sources.
Immediately our relationship to the Act Six story and our mission at Whitworth College became a major influence on all of our senses of self. We were both connected and divided based on our interpretations of how the story related to our call to leadership within the context of the Whitworth campus. Though empowered by the vision and those who endowed us with the call, many times we felt silenced and oppressed by the dominant culture on our campus. A few of us were more angry and rebellious when it came to expressing our discontent and demand for change. We didn’t always agree on the best way to engage in and/or tell the Act Six story at Whitworth.
Eventually, we began to reconcile our individual stories and to write our own Act Six story, together. Like the Bible stories we were taught in Sunday school, but were never taught to explore growing up, our stories were sometimes confusing and filled with uncertainty, sometimes tinged with a laughable innocence and certainly not always pretty.
Michael Eric Dyson claims, “If you listen to hip-hop, if you listen to some rappers, if you listen to the culture in general, you’re going to hear some of the most prophetic and articulate expressions, the anger and outrage that bourgeois Negroes should and do still possess, but often fail to manufacture or marshal.
Whether hip hop as we know it is the cultural context of the future or not, we cannot know, but the stories must continue to be told with the same creativity, fire and rebellion.
In the last verse of “Hip Hop is Dead” Nas says,
“Went from turntables to mp3s
From "Beat Street" to commercials on Mickey D's
From gold cables to Jacobs
From plain facials to Botox and face lifts”
His lyrics are of course nostalgic, but what can we read between the lines?
As a “founding-scholar” of Act Six I never dreamed of hearing the statement, “Act Six is dead” but one day I may have to say it. I may have to play the role like Nas has, as an OG in the game, reminding the next generation that culture does not survive on its own. We must continue to find creative ways to tell our own stories, as well as know the stories of our ancestors.  Only storytelling and creativity can sustain this nation that we all are a part of, care about, and are responsible for preserving.
(August 2010)

10.25.2010

It Was All a Dream: Storytelling as Mechanism for Nation Building ASNC 2010 - (1 of 3)


1993
I lie in bed at night, adoring the ceiling.
Contemplating life, warring with feelings.
If I wasn’t writing this poem in my head, I swear I’d be screaming;
sounds void of meaning roar within me.
I never imagined it would torment me this way
To see myself in my mirror each and everyday
After disrespecting Love in each and everyway
Maybe this is love or maybe it’s just another escape
from self-hate. See, this all started with one particular date.
Not 1985 like you might think.  It was a summer night in 1993. I
 spent the whole day playing and riding bikes, just me and my best friend Mike.
His tree house in the back and dunes and ditches in his front yard were so tight!
When the streets lights came on, Mike’s mom said I could spend the night. After a few fights,
 she called me away from the video game to the bathroom. She shut the door.
I could see it in her face; Everything was not okay.
As she got down on her knees with grace, her long gray hair hung even
 closer to the floor than before. She was trying not to cry as she told me
what my future had in store. There was a police officer at th front door.
 I had to leave now, but I couldn’t go home anymore. The tall officer in black
 walked me the short block to my home, surrounded by police. I don’t remember much
after that, except an unfamiliar gravel road and a little house surrounded by trees.
I spent that night in someone else’s bedroom comforting my younger siblings
and wanting for my mommy. See, 1993 may not mean anything to you,
but it explains everything to me. If the Game of Life, is all about transactions
and getting yours, it’s actually more like Monopoly; something you never
really know until you’ve been around the board and start landing on property.
And you gotta pay for everything you don’t own. It was the first time
I ever passed Go. I was only 7 years old, but my dreams were full grown.
Mommy was up all night and never up before noon
So we all lived in darkness. Somehow I knew things would change soon
Maybe it was that dream I had with all those people and balloons?
Our family was trying to escape this dark castle with bars on all the rooms.
When we finally escaped out of a tiny high window it was so bright outside
My eyes burned from the light. It was like we had climbed out of darkness and
into a new life. A few weeks later, the swat team raided our home.
I’d like to think I predicted the whole outcome, though no one listened to me.
 Now, its 2010 and I’m tired passing Go. I just need to buy some of those hotels
that I know so well from living in them after every eviction, in the days
Before 93— Before mom got back clean and her parental custody.
Before, 1994 when God made us Christian and we started acting like we hated sinning,
Everyday pretending like there was ever an ending to the old lives we were so comfortably living;
two grown kids, acting like parents, and five children.  In 2001, the ex-con left my mom
and us girls and his two boys and the house we just closed on.
Mom started dating again trying to move on, my sisters became rebellious teenagers ,
determined to do wrong. In 2003 I went away to school. I had to escape that hell.
I was being raised in a cell.  I never been to jail, but I paid many bails and I’m still in debt
to a God who held me and never failed me. The enemy may have derailed me,
but he could never ever sell me like a pimp. You see, cause even way before 1993
this was all meant to be.  Still, sometimes I wish I could just be another plain Jane
Chase riches and fame or I could be gay; chase bitches and play games with their hearts
“Baby, I love you. We should never be apart.” That’s some shit
 I could never say, yet everyday I steal hearts
but when I try to escape I get stopped by those bars
like grocery stores that won’t let you steal carts. And every time,
I end up right back at start, or maybe “Go” like a long game of monopoly?
I don’t know. But I’m tired of passing Go. I never collected two hundred dollars
And that’s counting two of my fathers. The third one, he provided a roof, some toys
and motivation to go to college, but he’s dismissed. “You tried to touch me and my sis.”
Now you live in every man I kiss. Fuck you! You’s a bitch!
And my mom, she ain’t your typical white chick.
She snaps her neck when she talk and she’ll get in a fight quick
if you talk shit, especially about her babies. I’m telling ya’ll, she’s crazy!
And I wish I could tell you where she got it from but I don’t know her dad or mom
That side of the family has a history of dying young, extreme poverty
and all types of abuse; alcohol, sexual, physical, no wonder my
momma says that I’m a miracle. The curse was supposed to continue.
When I was in her stomach, joints and wet sticks were on her menu.
Supposedly, the addiction stopped when she found out she was holding me.
It couldn’t have stopped forever because I feel it still controlling me.
But either way, you would never notice just by knowing me
I do best everyday to make sure you never know I was raised that way.
 But, I didn’t write this poem, like me, and everything since 1993,
This is not about poverty. Or property. Or religiosity.
 This is just the manifestation of prophesy.

(July 2010)

It Was All a Dream: Storytelling as Mechanism for Nation Building ASNC 2010 - (2 of 3)

It Was All a Dream: Storytelling as Mechanism for Nation Building ASNC 2010 - (3 of 3)

10.20.2010

Professional Bio

Tiffanie Beatty, the eldest of five, was born and raised in Tacoma. She recieved a full scholarship to Whitworth University for academic excellence and her commitment to leadership and diversity. At Whitworth, Tiffanie held several official and unofficial leadership positions. She graduated cum laude in 2007 with a BA in Psychology. Later that year, she moved to Chicago, Illinois for a one-year apprenticeship with the Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture, an academic off campus studies program located in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. Upon completion of her apprenticeship, Tiffanie was offered a position at the Chicago Center as the Program Coordinator and promoted the following year to Program Director, the position she currently holds. At Chicago Center, Tiffanie is responsible for maintaining and developing all program operations, including 5 academic terms throughout the year as well as several short-term group programs.
Aside from her work at the Chicago Center, Tiffanie is a writer, editor, performing artist and activist. While at Whitworth, Tiffanie performed her original spoken word poetry at several university sponsored events, including opening up for renowned spoken word artist, Shihan. Tiffanie’s works, “Slave Mentality,” a poem and “Niggaphobia,” a personal essay was published in Whitworth’s 2007 publication of “Script”.
Since Whitworth, Tiffanie has been a guest speaker and led workshops for Act Six Leadership and Scholarship Initiative as well as North Park University in Chicago. She has featured in several newsletters and online blogs, including “The Uplifting,” a progressive independent publication and the Northwest Leadership Foundation’s “The Watering Hole.”  She has also become active in the vibrant spoken word scene in Chicago, the birth place of the art form.  Tiffanie is a Project Manager for Black Freighter Productions. Her editing credits include the poetry book, “Becoming” by Ivan Tarver and an anthology, “Poetic Hustles, Volume I,” in which she has two poems as well.  Tiffanie’s first poetry book, “Black Like Milk” is expected to debut Winter 2010.
Tiffanie is also a founding Co-Director of Girls Reclaiming Individual Purpose in Society (GRIPS), a Tacoma-based organization dedicated to providing mentorship and community support for at-risk teenage girls and a Co-Founder and Producer with “Who You Calling Black?” a group dedicated to creatively exploring identity through community dialog and various media.
Other websites for Tiffanie Beatty include: http://www.chicagocenter.org/http://www.gripswa.org/ and www.welovereading.com

10.14.2010

Self-Publishing made easy?!?!

So maybe I'm really late on discovering this resource, but I figured I would share anyways...

All you aspiring writers should check out http://www.lulu.com/ for an quick easy way to publish your own work. There's lots of other stuff they do as well! Chicago Center is considering using this resource to publish our 40th Anniversary book and so I will let you know how that goes...

If anyone else has experience with this resource, please share!

Poetic Hustles In the Era of Hope and Change

I'ma hustla, I'ma, I'ma hustler homie!!! lol But for real, if you haven't purchased at least one copy of this anthology edited by yours truly and Ivan Azaan Tarver you definitely need to go to amazon.com right now and cop that!

http://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Hustles-Era-Hope-Change/dp/0980111439/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287088388&sr=8-2

I also have copies for $10 so ask me about it when you see me!

10.11.2010

Citizen Cope - If there is love

Saw this guy at the Vic Theater in Chicago this weekend with good friends! Great experience!

Lil Wayne - I Am Not A Human Being



I AM NOT BASIC!

October 11 is National Coming Out Day



"If we are invisible, we might as well be dead." -anonymous

LGBT teens are bullied 2 to 3 times as much as straight teens.
More than 1/3 of LGBT kids have attempted to commit suicide.
LGBT kids are 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than straight peers.

10.04.2010

Welcome, diamonds, clarity, and a few overdone metaphors...

Welcome to my blog!

In April of 1985 Tammy Beatty, a 17 year old young woman in Tacoma, WA gave birth to her first child, a baby girl she named Tiffanie Ladell Beatty. The surname Beatty is Irish and the name Ladell was created by a slight alteration of the child's father's middle name. The child's first name was given by her maternal grandmother, who was said to have been inspired by a popular soap opera character. The television character Tiffanie, was more than likely spelled "Tiffany" like the diamonds, which also happen to be the April baby's birthstone. As a Taurus, the reference to diamonds also fits with the natural tendency of the sign toward materialism. Despite the influence of the stars on Tiffanie's personality, her name, birth month and zodiac sign were as close to possessing diamonds as she would ever come...that is until Clara T was born.

Clara T, also spelled normally as Clarity, is an alter ego that came on the scene in the summer of 2009. Clara T was created as a way into and through the mysterious and unclear dilemmas in life. She is flawless and pure, but sometimes exposes ugly things. Her primary method of bringing truth to light is poetry and spoken word, but her voice can be heard even in the recital of a poignant rap lyric from a Tupac song and her image can be seen moving authentically to a funky guitar in a blues bar in Chicago.

These days Tiffanie L Beatty is introduced to open mic audiences simply as Tiff or Tiff B. It's what her friends and family call her and it represents her personal connection to her audience. Like any name, there's a deep and personal story behind Tiffanie Ladell Beatty that extends beyond the playful ironies. Flawless diamonds are almost non-existent and many of those that do exist come stained with blood (as we know from Kanye). One step, rhyme, exhale at a time, Clara T exposes a tiny portion of that truth and the beautiful stone that lies beneath.

I am Tiffanie Beatty, also known as Clara T, and this is a blog about my journey through a complex and unclear world. Through poetic exploration and critical analysis, it is my hope that this space can become a place of mining the most beautiful diamonds and sharing the purest of stones. May we stay inspired as we are always on the verge of seeing...