Month: January 2014

Life after King

Today is a day set aside by the Federal government to honor Dr. King.  King is most famous for his “I Have a Dream Speech” 1963 , for leading the civil rights movement, for being a pastor, and for being assassinated 1968.  In many ways King was the last Leader of American black people – Malcolm X had already been assassinated three years earlier 1965. I believe for this reason many people who are not black in America think that the civil rights cause won and things have improved vastly from the era of Jim Crow segregation that started during Redemption 1870′s and lasting until the mid 1960’s.  If you are doing the math that is nearly a hundred years.  One aspect of his work that Dr. King was less noted for is his work on the poor people’s campaign.  I believe that while King was definitely a race man, his color defined his history and led to his leadership, he was one of the first black intellectuals to seriously consider the impact of capitalism and economic structures on poor people of all skin types.  One remarkable line in the “I Have A Dream Speech” remarks on  his longing for a day when people are not judged by the color of their skin.  His work towards helping and uniting poor people together to help each other no matter what their color.

From wiki: The Poor People’s Campaign was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and carried out in the wake of King’s assassination. The Campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans of diverse background. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3000-person tent city on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign)

That King would turn towards the problem of class is not surprising given the global climate during his lifetime.  Black intellectual leaders had brought class into the focus in different ways.  Perhaps starting with Edward Blyden [1832-1912] who posited a rejection of materialism and a return to Africa and “noble savagery” for spiritual health, black intellectuals have been keenly aware of the economic burdens that blacks face.  Fanon paved the way in many respects with Wretched of the Earth 1963 to start thinking seriously about the need to examine the divisions of race as masking the struggle of poor people of all races.

What would happen if people stopped hating, suspecting, judging, arresting, harassing, killing, beating each other because of the differences in the pigmentation of one’s skin, the shape of one’s nose, eyes or mouth, and the texture of one’s hair?

Officially segregation ended as laws were struck down across the south which allowed black people to go to white universities or live in white neighborhoods, or swim in public pools, or have to ride in a separate rail car or the back of the bus, or even have sex with a person of a different race, or marry a person of a different race.

If you travel the suburban and rural landscape of the United States, you see segregation still exists, with black sections of cities, towns, neighborhoods, churches, shops.  If you read the news and remember Trevon Martin we must see that the segregation of the United States is not upheld by Federal or State laws.  It is upheld through force and violence without any legal justification.

If you google statistics for poor people in the United States, you find that 4 out of 5 “U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/28/poverty-unemployment-rates_n_3666594.html)  That means about 80% of the population are very poor.  Why are all the poor people of the country uniting?  We must all learn to look past the color of skin, as well as the perceptions of poverty, or the possession of the right genitalia, or who others choose to have sex.  Otherwise we remain an impoverished damaged citizenry.  I believe this is something Dr. King was moving towards – we will never know because he was gunned down in Memphis on a hotel balcony while he was visiting to support a Sanitation Workers strike.

The Importance of 12 Years a Slave

Today it was announced that the film 12 Years a Slave is on the short list of Oscar nominations.  If you have not seen this movie you should try to do so, or do something radical and read the book. This film deserves to be seen and recognized for both  cinematic qualities and the historical accuracy it seeks to portray based of the firsthand account of the main protagonist Solomon Northup.  Commentary about the film often brings up the fact that most people do not have an accurate picture of several historical aspects presented.  To name perceptions challenged were the complicated realities of enslavement; the existence of free black people, or Negroes as they self-referred to in intellectual circles, before emancipation; the existence of black intellectuals before emancipation.   The film does a wonderful job of showing the damage done to the psyches of everyone involved in the enterprise of chattel slavery.  The slave owner an as evil; the enslaved period as helpless, and neither are women of either race.  A large part of my research is directed to uncovering the complexity of race. Not just in the 21st century when all identities are more and more portrayed in terms of intersection, hybridity, and fluidity, but historically identity can never be flattened into stereotypes and inaccurate historical portrayals (see my post on 30 Americans for more on this especially in regards to Kehnide Wiley’s Sleep)

Several parts of the film reminded me of Fanon’s work Black Skin White Masks especially the scene in which Solomon Northup is brought into a slave auction which is set dressed to resemble a museum.  Fanon speaks of his first realization of the effect of his skin color on how others see him is chapter entitled The Fact of Blackness. He describes what it is like for a black man to be forced to see himself through the eyes of the Anglo/Europeans who see him as a stereotype and not an intelligent theorist and Medical Doctor.  His ability to speak French with a Parisian accent, or his income and education levels are not recognized by the child on the street who he recounts as recoiling in fear of him.  Northup faces a similar situation when he encounters himself as a enslaved black man who is also highly educated and middle class, in a visceral way as he is presented among other black bodies in various stages of undress or naked for inspection and salve.  The purchasers are not interested him as an educated moderately successful black man they are only interested in his body.  A perfect correlation to Fanon’s Marxist analysis of enslavement, trans Atlantic colonization, identity, and culture as well.

The challenge of creating more nuanced and more ethical understandings of identity calls for a resurrection of histories that work to show the fluidity of all identity categories, and the problems of adhering to rigid concepts.  Mostly the fallout from remaining socially/culturally/politically embedded in the belief in rigid identities tends to portray people in flattened ways which erase their stories as humans which leads to problems with understanding people as being more and less at different times various categories of identity.  A good way to think about this is to remember, as the film prompts us to do, that poor whites were often indentured servants and treated in similar (though perhaps slightly less brutal) ways as enslaved black people during the same time period.  Thus, we cannot think of the economic system of slavery as only exploiting black people. Poor whites were also exploited.  The film also seeks to resurrect the famous Marxist/Existentialist view of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic.  Which, put as simply as possible, states that the master relies on the enslaved to create their identity.  Coupled with Fanon’s observations of the effects of torture upon those who conduct torture (mental anguish, ptsd, and break downs) he made in Wretched of the Earth is visibly rendered in the alcoholic deranged broken character of Edwin Epps played wonderfully by Michael Fassbender.  You would be hard pressed to like this character, but you also see how emotionally and mentally broken he is.  This is not to excuse the actions portrayed in the film, but simply to say that we have to recognize how oppression and repression create the most horrific human relationships and both suffer.

Steve McQueen who is not only a award winning filmmaker is a highly educated fine artist who is known for his exploration of identity and suffering not only in 12 Years a Slave, but also in Hunger.  Hunger is a depiction of the story of Bobby Sands an IRA revolutionary who starved his self to death in English custody to protest the conditions of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland who were impoverished and desperate.  “Most of McQueen’s oeuvre—including his gallery-based installations as well as feature films—evidences a potent, at times oblique, political consciousness. Many works address specific social and historical moments in ways that seemingly emerge from documentary or journalistic impulses.” (http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/steve-mcqueen).  McQueen reminds us of the Buddhist/existential argument that suffering is what unites all of humanity and therefore we must dismantle our judgmental rigid negative concepts of identity and heal the suffering.

Amiri Baraka Dead:

Many people in academia do not know who this man was.  I discovered him as LeRoi Jones when a professor had my class read excerpts from Blues People.  The work was inspirational in guiding me towards the lenses I use in my project (black skin, black masks)  while thinking about the influence of Africana objects and motifs on artists in the United States, especially influential with the avant gaurde starting in the 1920’s.  In Blues People, Baraka makes an argument that one can find Africana influence in American culture beginning with the importation of enslaved Africans.  At the end of the 1800’s enslaved people were dwindling as imports, but the importation of material objects which became the seat of debate amongst art historians and anthropologist had begun in earnest with a naturalized Prussian, Carl Stekleman, followed closely by a black Presbyterian missionary, William H. Sheppard.

Many people in the United States fail to recognized the influence of Africana cultural expression in u.s. culture.  Just as many people in the American University culture fail to acknowledge the brilliance of Baraka.  I have not read his poetry.  He was an inspiration at a purely academic level.  I am grateful to have encountered his work.

Peace out brother