Don't Laugh. It's Paid For.

I drive a 2007 Honda Accord EX with a huge crack in the windshield.  There's nothing fancy about it other than it's color, red.

Don't laugh.  It's paid for.

You see, I hate having a car payment.  For the first six years after I graduated law school, I didn't have one.  In my family, we recycle cars.  We hand them down.  After graduation from law school in 1990, I was handed down a 1981 Honda Prelude.  Red.  That car had been purchased by my oldest sister when I graduated high school.  In 1988, she purchased another Honda and handed the '81 Prelude down to my sister The Writing Diva.  I don't recall how I ended up with it, but I did.

I literally drove it until it fell apart some 15 years after it was purchased, all my fault for taking out the undercarriage on a curb.  Given that that '81 Prelude had already survived one car accident, it was a shame how I ended up taking it out.  It ran like a dream.  All I had to do was keep the oil changed, get regular tune-ups, and replace the tires.  Whenever I came home, my dad would even wash and wax the car for me.   Even toward then end, when my friends would laugh and say, "When are you finally going to get a new car?", I would respond, "Why do I need a new car when this one is paid for?"  From 1990 to 1996, I had no car payment.  Sweet.

I bought my first car in 1996 when I totaled the '81 Prelude, trading up for a Honda Accord.  The '96 Accord was crushed by a moving van in 1998 and replaced with a 1998 Honda Accord (See a trend here?).  From 2003 to 2007, I again had no car payment.  I had every intention of driving that '98 Honda Accord until the wheels fell off.

I ended up handing it down to my nephew and buying the 2007 Honda Accord that is officially mine, all mine, today.   The '98 Accord is still running.   And now I'm gunning for my family's continuous car ownership record, held by my middle sister -- 22 years of driving the same car.

We're a buy and hold kind of family when it comes to cars.  We typically drive our cars until the wheels fall off and duct tape will no longer do.  Why?  Because we HATE having car payments.  My oldest sister who replaced her '81 Honda Prelude with an '88 Honda Accord drove that '88 Accord until 2007, 19 years.  But the family champ is my middle sister, who drove a '78 Toyota Corolla until 2000, replacing it with a 2000 Honda Accord.  Twenty-two years she rode in that Corolla, with duct tape on the bumper and red tape on the rear tail lights at the end.  I'm looking to beat her record and buy my next car used and for cash.  Right now I'm competing with my dad, who's been driving a '98 Acura for a while.

And yes, I'll get that cracked windshield fixed now that I no longer have a car payment.  I refuse to make an insurance claim.  I've already made enough of them on this car.

But don't laugh.  It's paid for.

My Family's Revolution: Home Ownership

Well, my family's revolution has come to an end.  And a beginning, of sorts.  We've discussed family mission statements, credit, budgets, sou-sous, gentle nudges,  financial literacy, estate planning and career planning, and entrepreneurship.  The last two modules of our series of talks, titled, "Something to Think About," were to address home ownership and educating our children.

While we were cruising our way toward finishing up the modules on home ownership and educating our kids, real life got in the way.  A revered elder was stricken with cancer but has not only survived, but thrived with chemo.  Another family member faced a life-threatening illness but continues to fight back.  God is good, all the time.

Needless to say, we all got a little distracted, and family meetings had to be postponed.  We finally finished in August, and I'm going to devote separate blog entries to the home ownership module and the education module.  This one is for home ownership.

First things first:  Despite the housing market meltdown, I'm still a believer in home ownership.  Why?

Because a home is usually the largest asset in the average American's portfolio, and most of us aren't savvy enough to make money off of stocks, bonds, and other investments alone.

Because of the mortgage interest deduction, for however long it lasts.  For the life of me I can't understand paying rent for your entire life, getting a paltry renter's credit, if at all, and having nothing to show for all the rent you paid when you retire.  I just don't get it.

Because home ownership, done properly, creates stability in your family.  I've been on the poopy end of the rental stick, having been given 60 days' notice to move out of our rental solely because the landlord wanted to move back in.  As long as I pay my mortgage, I have a place to stay that can't be taken away from me at someone else's whim.  This is especially important when you have children.

Mind you, even if you pay off your home, you're not going to make a lot off of it in the long run unless there's another real estate bubble.  That said, it is an asset that you can control and, to a certain extent, borrow against for large future expenses should you so choose, which I would not.

Because once you pay it off, you can hand it down to your children.  A house is the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer for most average Americans.  The ability to hand a house down to your children can, if done wisely, help them to maintain a middle-class lifestyle.  Because we African Americans tend to have lower home ownership rates than whites, we tend to hand down less wealth to our children.  However, home ownership rates for southern African Americans have usually been higher than for African Americans in other parts of the country.

I did not present the module on home ownership.  Mary Assadi, an extraordinary realtor with Keller Williams and a friend of Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB), did.  Mary outlined the basic home buying process and help us understand the different kinds of real estate loans you can get.  More on that later.

What I did provide was a list of all the things BMNB and I did right and wrong in buying our home.  They are: 

1.      Not checking out our realtor.  We used our realtor (who was not Mary -- we didn't know Mary was a realtor when we bought) because his mother had name recognition and expertise in our real estate market.  Although we did have access to her through him, we should have found someone who was more experienced and who listened more to what we wanted. 

 

2.      Not seeking a mortgage through an independent mortgage broker.  We got our mortgage through Wells Fargo because 1) they did FHA loans; 2) they did CalPERS loans; and 3) BMNB banked with them (my credit union did not do CalPERS loans).  An independent mortgage broker has access to a variety of loan products; a bank will only sell you what they have to offer, and they probably won’t keep your loan in their portfolio.  In our case, Wells Fargo eventually sold our loan to Citibank, who later sold it to another bank.

3.      Not being clear on how much we wanted to spend.  I wanted to spend more, BMNB wanted to spend less.  The realtor agreed with me, for obvious reasons.  BMNB had to set him straight.  It wasn't pretty. 

4.      Buying a home in a new and incomplete neighborhood.  We were lured to our relatively new neighborhood by signs saying “School coming soon” and “Park coming soon.”  Well, soon never came, and neither did the school and the parks.  Both the school district and the city ran out of money.  Never buy in a new neighborhood that isn’t completely built out.

5.      Not checking out the finances of the school district and the city.  We should have never believed the parks and schools signs and should have read the financial reports for both the city and the school district to see if they really did have the money to finish the parks and the schools.  They didn't.

6.      Not double-checking the amount that needed to be impounded for taxes.  When you don't put down at least 20% for your house, your lender will require you to pay money in addition to your mortgage each month to cover the twice annual property tax bill, private mortgage insurance bill, and homeowner insurance bill.  This additional money is held by the lender, or "impounded," until these bills become due, and the lender pays them.  The bank got the amount of our monthly impound wrong, and we had to play catch-up to pay back the amounts that weren’t impounded.

7.      Not checking on whether the neighbors next door were renters.  Not that all renters are bad – we were renters, too.  When you buy, however, you don’t want to live next door to a rental house because you never know who your neighbors are going to be for the long haul.  We specifically asked our realtor to check on this but he didn’t, and we didn’t follow up.  Our next-door neighbors to the north are renters.

8.      Not checking on future development plans for nearby neighborhoods.  We didn’t know that a new neighborhood was slated to be constructed near our neighborhood.  The school district doesn’t have the money to build additional schools, and our neighborhood school is crowded as it is.  When the new neighborhood comes on board, our neighborhood school will be overcrowded and the streets may be gridlocked with morning commuters.

9.      Not negotiating to have all or part of our Mello-Roos bond paid.  A Mello-Roos bond is a bond that all buyers of new houses in California are responsible for paying to pay for the neighborhood infrastructure such as sewers, lighting, etc.  They run from twenty to forty years.  You can negotiate to have the seller pay part or the entire Mello-Roos bond or to lower the price of the home to compensate for the price of the Mello-Roos bond.  Buyers don’t like to buy houses with huge Mello-Roos bonds, which will ultimately make our house harder to sell.  Yep, we're pretty much sitting on rental property.  Thanks, Henry Mello and Mike Roos.

 

10.  Not checking on where the local utilities are located in relation to our house.  We knew that the railroad tracks were two blocks behind our home.  What we didn’t know was that there’s a petroleum gas line that runs right alongside the railroad tracks.  Think San Bruno.

Here are the successes BMNB and I had in buying our home:

1.      Using our own inspector.  We wanted an inspector who didn’t have an interest in the outcome, such as someone who was referred to us by our realtor. 

2.      Checking out future freeway plans for the neighborhood.  We knew that a freeway bypass was slated to come through our neighborhood, but we went to the CalTrans office to make sure the bypass wasn’t going to be too close to our house.

3.      Buying a home that will suit us for the next ten years.  BMNB and I knew we planned to adopt, so we wanted a home that would be big enough for the family we planned to have, not the family we had.

4.      Getting a CalPERS loan.  CalPERS no longer does home loans, but one of the requirements of the loan program was to keep fees low.

5.      Buying in a neighborhood with a Home Owners Association (HOA).  A lot of people don’t like living in neighborhoods with HOA’s because they don’t like all the rules.  We like the rules because the rules keep your neighbors from doing things to their property that brings down the value of yours, e.g., painting their houses hot pink or parking their cars on the front yard.  It works for us, but it may not be for everybody.

6.      Buying a foreclosure.  Relatively speaking, we got a good deal.  The down side?  The house continued to lose value.  That’s why we had to make sure it was someplace we’d be happy to stay in for a while.

7.      Checking out the neighborhood at all times of the day and night before buying.  BMNB and I made trips to our neighborhood during all hours of the day and night to get an idea of what the neighborhood was really like – the sights and sounds during all hours of the day – and to see how we would be received.

8.      Buying a house that suited our life style.  BMNB and I are homebodies who like suburban life.  We like living someplace that is quiet, safe, family-oriented, and away from congested cities.  We chose our neighborhood because it was affordable, safe, quiet and family-oriented.  Think about your own lifestyle – e.g., whether you are an urbanite who likes to walk to the grocery store and ride your bike to work – before you buy your house.

9.  Getting a fixed rate loan.  We got an FHA (Federal Housing Administration) 30 year fixed loan, which means that our monthly mortgage payments will be the same for the entire 30 years of the loan.  No adjustable rates, no balloon payments, no interest-only loans.
 

 

Here is A VERY BASIC GUIDE to home buying process as laid out by Mary Assadi with notes added by me.  You should definitely consult a realtor and learn more about the process:

 

1.  Initial consultation and market education:  This is where you meet with your realtor to discuss what you're looking for and for your realtor to educate you about the real estate market you'll be dealing with.  A good realtor tries to find out what you want and what your lifestyle is and then tries to find houses to fit you, not the other way around.  And no good realtor should try to talk you into a house you cannot afford.  (The old rule of thumb I'd always heard was that your home should not cost more than 2-3 times your gross annual income, but that may not always apply.)

 

2.  Loan prequalification or preapproval:  Prequalification is when your banker or mortgage broker reviews your credit, income and assets and determines how large a mortgage they think you would qualify for.  Preapproval is when the banker or mortgage broker actually commits to you that you are approved for a certain amount of a mortgage.  I would highly suggested getting preapproved instead of prequalified so you don't waste the realtor's time.  With preapproval, you can lock in a mortgage rate for a certain number of days to allow you to find a home.

 

3.  Viewing property. 

 

4.  Finding a home and submitting an offer.  This is where you need to engage and trust your realtor.  There can be some strategy to submitting an offer, especially if you are competing with other buyers.  Your realtor's experience will be crucial to helping you put in an offer that stands out from all the others.

 

5.  Negotiating terms.  Your seller may reject your offer and provide a counteroffer.  Negotiating the terms of the offer is an area of expertise for your realtor.

 

6.  Accepted Offer!  Yay!  Now, the transaction enters three separate tracks that lead to closing, e.g., when you sign the loan documents.

 

a.  Inspections, disclosures, and contingencies: 

i. Schedule home inspection and review seller's disclosures of defects or things that need repair.

ii. Have home inspection and, if necessary, request that the seller make repairs before the transaction can go forward. 

iii.  Remove contingencies, e.g., conditions that need to be met in order for the buyer and/or seller to agree to the sale, such as requests for repair.

 

b. Escrow and Title

i.  Open an escrow account and have earnest money deposited.  An escrow account is an account controlled by a neutral third party, typically an escrow or title company, into which money for the sale of the house is deposited and held until all the contingencies are met.  Earnest money is money you pay to show that you are serious about the transaction, and it is credited against the total price of the house.

ii. Get a preliminary title report and homeowners insurance information.  A title report shows all the times the house has been sold and who bought it.  It helps you know that the person who is selling you the house actually owns it.  The title report will also reveal if there are any liens against the property.  You will want all liens to be paid before closing.

 

c.  Loan application

i.  Submit a formal loan application and collect documentation for the loan.  You will need bank statements, income tax returns, and all kinds of documents in order to qualify for a mortgage.

ii.  Order appraisal; loan package submitted to underwriter.  The bank will order an appraisal of the house to make sure it's worth what you're paying for it and worth the mortgage they're going to give you for it.  Your loan application, once completed with all the proper documentation, will be sent by your banker or mortgage broker to their underwriting department, who will determine whether you qualify for the loan or if they have additional questions you need to answer in order to get the loan.

iii.  Loan approval and responding to conditions:  Your mortgage loan may be approved, but with conditions, e.g., explaining where you got your earnest money from, explaining things on your credit report.  Once your respond to the underwriter's conditions in a way that satisfies the underwriter, you get your mortgage loan.

 

7.  Sign loan documents at title company and provide a cashier's check for the required closing funds, also called "closing."  Your closing costs may include fees related to the cost of escrow, the title search, the inspection, etc.  You should get a Good Faith Estimate (GFE) in advance of signing the loan documents so you know how much of your own money you need to have in cashier's check at the time.

 

8.  Lender funds the loan.  Once you've signed all the loan documents and paid all the closing costs, the lender pays the amount of the mortgage loan to the buyer.

 

9.  Title is recorded in your name and confirmation is received.  Once the lender funds the loan, ownership, or "title," passes from the seller to the buyer by recording "title" with the county assessor.  Once title is recorded, the house is officially yours.

 

10.  GET THE KEYS TO YOUR NEW HOME!

 

 

Here are some examples of types of mortgage loan programs, courtesy of Mary Assadi:

 

Conventional Loans

•  20% down payment (no mortgage insurance)
• 3-5% down payment (mortgage insurance w/lower debt to income ratio)
• 3.875 interest rate (as of 5/4/12) for a 30-year fixed
• 3.00% interest rate (as of 5/4/12) for a 15-year fixed
• Impounds optional

FHA (Federal Housing Administration) Loan

• 3.5% down payment (up front and monthly mortgage insurance)
• 3.75% interest rate (as of 5/4/12) for a 30-year fixed.
• Impounds required

CALHFA w/FHA

• 1 % down payment (upfront and monthly mortgage insurance)
• 3% down payment by CALHFA is a silent second mortgage on home (due upon sale with simple interest)
• Higher credit scores required
• Same interest rate on FHA loan for the first mortgage

HomePath

• 3% down payment without mortgage insurance
• Only available on Fannie Mae foreclosure properties
• Interest rate usually 1 - 1.5% higher than available FHA rate

Resources

Mary Assadi http://maryassadi.com/
Eric Tyson and Ray Brown, "Home Buying Kit for Dummies "

 

The GOP Pussy Riot: Shit Just Got Real

Soooo . . . . the GOP, from ol' Mittens down to Karl Rove, are running for the hills and taking their money with them, trying to distance themselves from the ignorance that is Missouri GOP senate candidate Todd Akin.  Akin got on a local TV show and revealed his complete and utter ignorance about female physiology, telling us that. with a "legitimate rape," the female body can somehow shut down conception.  After getting woodshedded by his party superiors, he walked back his statement, apologizing for using the term "legitimate rape." The entire GOP is telling Akin to drop out no later than today so they can put another candidate in his place.

WTF?

What we have going on here is a GOP pussy riot.  It's not that they're ashamed of Akin's uninformed and antiquated views.  Heck, Paul Ryan and many GOPers have sponsored bills with Akin to eliminate abortion rights except for "legitimate rape," whatever that is. And there are many ignorant GOP members who share Akin's ignorant view on conception, as if an ovum can outrun sperm that comes from "legitimate rape."  Oh no, it's just that President Obama has a commanding lead among women and the GOP can't afford to fall further behind.  So they're using their former ally Akin as a whipping boy.  If they can literally get him off the stage, they can continue to distract us from what they would do with women's reproductive rights if they had all the power to do so and hide their ignorant views on rape.

I, for one, want Akin to stay in the race.  Let's go ahead and have that debate about abortion rights and what the GOP would really do if they were in control.  Mind you, I'm not all that hyped about abortion.  I don't support it as a choice in my life, although I'm way past the age of having to make that decision.   I'm for all the contraception a woman can get so she never has to make the choice to abort a child.  But I have a major problem with men deciding this issue for women.  Let's have a pussy riot for real.

Let's talk about rape and the fact that there is no such thing as "legitimate" rape.  "No" means "no," and rape is rape.

Let's talk about the inconsistency of opposing contraception that would make abortion not even be an option and opposing abortion, too.  About making women have children against their will, regardless of their religious beliefs.

Let's talk about basic conception -- that an ovum can't tell whether sperm comes from rape.

In fact, let's just go all out and talk about all the ways the GOP has put the rights of women in their cross hairs.

The GOP started this pussy riot; let's finish it.  Shit just got real.

GOP "Gaslighting" the American Electorate

To hear ol' Mittens Romney and Paul Ryan tell it, President Obama has plunged the American economy over the cliff, and only they -- the GOP -- are in a position to rescue America.  Even Mrs. Romney has bought into and perpetuated the narrative of Mittens as "Superman" saving America.

WTF?

This is what could best be described as the GOP "gaslighting" the American public.

The term "gaslighting" comes from the movie "Gas Light," in which a husband tries to make his wife think she is crazy so that others will, too.  According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

So when I hear Paul Ryan say that President Obama made our economy worse, I know for damn sure I'm being gaslighted.  What President Obama did, consistent with what President George Bush did before him, was to keep the American economy from going off the cliff by keeping the banks AND the Detroit auto industry in business.  And I really feel like I'm being gaslighted when the press reports that Paul Ryan voted for TARP.

Like my doctor says, just as no one ever gives a doctor credit for the heart attack her patient didn't have, no one ever gives a politician credit for the crisis he averted.

What's even more "gaslighty" about this is that they want to revert to the policies that almost pushed the country off the economic cliff and roll back the limited protections put in place by President Obama under their rubric that less regulation is good for all of America, not just their corporate cronies.  NOT.

Let's face it -- if a white man of EITHER political party had kept the banks afloat, kept Detroit in business, passed a stimulus package that not only augmented the budgets of several states in recessionary times but also kept many teachers and public safety officers on the job, ended a war, created a consumer protection agency focused on reigning in financial institutions' wretched excess, passed health care reform that allowed people to get coverage DESPITE pre-existing conditions and put their 23 year-old kids back on their health care insurance, ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," signed the Lily Ledbetter law, AND  freakin' killed Osama bin Laden,  we wouldn't even be talking about a re-election.  We'd be talking about a coronation.

What the GOP won't cop to is that they've been trying to derail this president from day one.

Well I, for one, refuse to be gaslighted.  And I think the American public will refuse to be, too, in November.

It's Not Just a Table; It's a Tradition

When you look at this table, it looks like an old, beat up, unloved piece of furniture.  A hot ghetto mess if you will.

There's so much more to this table than meets the eye.  It's not just a table; it's a tradition.

This table is a solid maple Colonial-style dining table that my parents bought sometime during the  1960's.  It is the only dinner table I ever knew in our household growing up.  With its three leaves, it can seat up to ten people.  Sometimes during the holidays, our eight-member family needed the extra space for guests.  They don't make tables like this anymore.  When I say it's solid maple, I mean just that -- no veneers, no composite wood.  Solid maple.  It takes at least two people to lift it. At least.

I'm pretty sure I learned to walk leaning on the legs of this table.  My late mother, SWIE (She Who Is Exalted), took great care of this table.  Despite the fact that she had six children and she never allowed us to eat in any part of the house but at this table, she kept a foam protective cover on the table and a fresh, ironed tablecloth on top of the cover every single day, even into her illness with Alzheimer's and cancer before she died.   Every week or two, but never more than three, she would remove the soiled tablecloth, pull back the protective cover, polish the table and chairs, replace the protective cover, and iron a clean tablecloth and put it on top of the protective cover. When she died, my oldest sister, who would later inherit my parents' house, took over caring for the table.   In my lifetime, I have never dined or eaten at this table without its foam protective cover and a tablecloth on it, despite the fact that every home meal I had growing up, every Christmas Dinner I ate before my mother died (except for one, when I was studying abroad), every Thanksgiving Dinner I ate before my mother died, was eaten at this table.

I used to sit and do my homework at this table while my mom cooked dinner.  it was years before my feet reached the floor.

My sisters and I used to comb my grandmother's hair when she sat at this table.  We were mesmerized by her hair's soft, straight texture, which was nothing like any of ours.

We debated politics  and current affairs with my dad at this table, who insisted that everyone have an opinion no matter what their age.  We debated everything from the Equal Rights Amendment, to comparable worth (remember that?), to re-electing Nixon (Dad voted for Nixon, despite my strenous objections, even at age 9), to Watergate, to O.J. Simpson's guilt (my dad and my brothers admitted they thought O.J. did it, but said they'd never tell white people that).

I was sitting at this table doing Calculus problems when they announced on the radio that John Lennon had been shot and killed.

I sat at this table and announced to my family, with great shame, that I had failed the California State Bar Exam, to which my mother replied, "Everybody falls down.  I'll let you lay down there for a little while and feel sorry for yourself.  But then you have to get back up."  I did, and I later passed.

We had our first Christmas dinner that my mother did not cook at this table, because my mother no longer remembered her Christmas recipes due to Alzheimer's disease.

So I guess by now you're wondering how it got to look like a hot ghetto mess?

Because we made the mistake of passing it down to the generation behind us, AKA, "The Generation That Values Nothing" or TGTVN.

You see, we thought the table and its chairs, despite their unfortunate Colonial style, would mean something to TGTVN because it had been passed down from my parents to us to them.  We siblings thought that TGTVN would care for the table and enjoy family and holiday dinners with their children at the table as we had.

And I'm sure they did, and then some.  But not with any care for the table. 

No foam protective covering, no tablecloth, nothing.  They let their kids color and glue and eat and spill and mark on top of this solid maple table without a care.  To them, it was just an old relic.  Maybe they didn't remember watching my mother iron a tablecloth each weekend or so to replace the soiled one, or maybe they didn't remember her getting out the Pledge and polishing a table top that no one would ever see because it was too beautiful not to be covered.

I wish it were so.  But the truth is, they didn't value it because they didn't have to work for it, like many things they've received from our generation that they didn't have to work for.  We made the mistake of trying to help them so they wouldn't have to struggle as much, so that every generation would do better than the next.

That was our mistake.  We assumed too much.  And, as my oldest brother said, we deprived them of the lessons that come from struggle, the lessons that come from having to work for something you want or need.  We also did not share with them the love that my mother had for and put into that table.

Well, TGTVN left the table behind in the garage at my parents' old house, which they had rented from its current owner, my brother, who had bought the house from my sister.  I had seen the table before in TGTVN's possession its current state and offered to buy it back.  I was told that I could buy it once they got a new table.  They never did.

So when I saw the table in my brother's garage, left upside-down on concrete, no less, I made arrangements to bring it to my house.   The picture of it above was taken in my garage.   Yes, I stole the table, with my brother's blessing.  The chairs?  I never liked them, but I wouldn't have done to a cockroach what they did to those chairs.  We found parts of the chairs in the front yard.  Yes, parts. Of solid maple chairs.  Just a hot ghetto mess.

So now I have my mother's table, plus the three leaves that go with it.  I will have it professionally refinished.  I will then put a protective cover on it, followed by a tablecloth.  I will buy new upholstered chairs to go with it to kind of hide the Colonial stylings under the table that I never really liked.

And then my husband, my children to come (very soon, sometime before the end of the year if all goes well), and I will dine at this table.  We will have our Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners on this table, this time with formal china.  And I will tell them the history of this table, tell them of its solid construction, tell them the care that the grandmother they will never know put into this table.  I will impart its history upon them.

We will start our new traditions at this table.  Hopefully, they will value it more than the others in their generation.   Because, as my sister The Writing Diva said, "It's not just a table; it's a tradition."

Gabby Douglas Is Not Her Hair

Sometimes, we black women don't know how to act.

We have the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in the all-around women's gymnastic competition in the Olympics, and sisters are criticizing her hair?  Are you kidding me?

I've warned white folks to stay out the hair conversation when it comes to Malia's and Sasha Obama's hair.  Now, to my black sisters:  Grow up and stop projecting your own hair issues onto Gabby.

I am often among the hair challenged.  Some days my hair is bouncin' and behavin', some days, not so much.  But I'm too focused on handling my business to care if I've hit the hair mark each and every freakin' day.  I've got far more important things to do than to worry about whether other people approve of my hair.

And, apparently, so does Gabby Douglas.  Like coppin' two gold medals.

But I've seen this kind of criticism before.  I recently spent time with a friend who just couldn't let go of the fact that a black woman newscaster we were watching failed to wear false eyelashes during a broadcast.  She went on and on about how, with high definition television, the beauty bar had been raised for sisters on the air, and this sister, in her mind, had an epic beauty fail.

Not a mention was made about whether the sister newscaster was good at her job.  She wasn't wearing false eyelashes.

Puh-leeze.

This black women's hair thing and our appearance in general isn't about that newscaster or Gabby Douglas.  It's about how we as black women feel about our own appearances and hair and how we're projecting our own insecurities onto unsuspecting ACHIEVING black women in the public eye.

I, for one, hope Gabby Douglas isn't paying attention to any of this mess.  She's got far too much to do that's more important than her hair.  To her sister hair haters, I say, she's got two gold medals -- what you got?  Yeah.  That's what I thought.

For goodness' sake, don't ruin this young sister's triumph with your own issues about your hair and/or your appearance.  Go handle your hair issues and let Gabby do her thing, which, by the way, she's doing quite well, thank you, ma'am.

In the words of India.Arie, Gabby Douglas is not her hair; she is not her skin, she is the soul that lives within.

Congrats, Gabby.  And in the words of the late Billy Preston (way before your time), you are so beautiful to me.

Big Mama's Dead, So Get Your Shit Together

Most of us black folks who came of age in the '60's and '70's grew up with at least one matriarchal figure in the family who held things together and held up the triflin' folks in the family.  This matriarch was usually older, someone who always kept a roof over her head, paid her bills, and always had a meal available for anyone who crossed her threshold.  She always seemed to be able to dig down in her bra and find a twenty for someone to "hold," knowing full well she'd probably never get it back.  She'd co-sign for some young'un in the family trying to get a car or some furniture and wouldn't think twice about mortgaging her house to get her child or grandchild out on bail. She was the kind of woman who maybe worked a menial job, cooked up a storm on Saturday night for family card games, and pulled herself together for Sunday school and making a huge Sunday dinner.  She was Big Mama.  And if there were an Olympic sport for putting everyone else first and ignoring your own health, the Big Mamas would have medaled for sure.  They were overweight, ate a fat-laden diet, were often hypertensive or diabetic, and oftentimes smoked like chimneys.

Well, I've got news for the generations of black folks behind me.  Big Mama's dead, so get your shit together.

Anyone in the generations behind me looking for that same kind of black matriarch to fill the shoes of the Big Mamas before her is destined to be disappointed.  No one wants the role.  I know I don't.

Times have changed, and nobody, least of all elderly black women, can afford to carry any other grown-ass adults who make unwise decisions and end up in need because of them.  The financial setbacks that can come for co-signing for folks or mortgaging your house to help someone are far harder to overcome now than since the Great Depression.  As my late mother, SWIE (She Who Is Exalted) used to say, "Money's as tight as Dick's hat band."  As a child, I never knew who Dick was, but he and his hat band were always invoked when my mother didn't have it to give.

The Big Mamas of my childhood WERE the social safety net that government wasn't, or wasn't on time enough to be.  They were the ones who would take folks in when they lost their jobs, who'd keep a drug-addicted niece or nephew from losing their kids to the foster care system, who not only raised their kids and their grandkids, but their great-grands as well.

Black mothers today do well just to raise the children they have.  Elderly black women do well to keep a roof over their heads.  Taking on the created problems of grown-ass people who don't have their shit together is more than most black women of any age can handle.  And given how the Big Mamas of the past ignored their health tending to everyone else, well, that's not a model my generation wants to emulate.

So, if you don't have your shit together -- a steady job, a roof over your head, a way to take care of your own kids and stand on your own two feet, well, don't go looking for Big Mama.  Big Mama's dead, and nobody's going to to replace her.  Nobody wants to.