Race – Page 2 – My Own RE:public

Segregation by Genre

For a couple of reasons Alex Abramovich’s piece entitled “Even When It’s a Big Fat Lie” (limited access so the link is a bit dicey) in the London Review of Books particularly interested me. Firstly, it is a review of Ken Burns’s eight part PBS documentary “Country Music”, and I had read a flattering piece in The New York Times a couple of months ago, and that Abramovich’s is not; secondly, I saw a grainy rerun of Burns’s lauded by some, and lambasted by others, 1990 series, The Civil War, not so long ago – and thought it a very mediocre work – whereby, I mean in terms of the structure and film-making aesthetic (though to be fair it is thirty years old); the historical shortcomings and omissions, as Abramovich mentions, were debated at the time by those qualified to do so, and the criticism has not abated over the years. (I should say just about everything I know about the Civil War comes from Eric Foner, and he was one of the fiercest critics at the time.)

And it is in terms of Ken Burns’s prior work, that Abramovich launches into his criticism of “Country Music”, because, whether one agreed with their perspective or not, a range of historians did contribute to “The Civil War”, whereas in Burns’s succeeding documentaries the input from historians has dramatically declined over the years, to the point whereby “Country Music” has only one, Bill Malone, and it his interpretation alone that frames Burns’s work. And, one should say, even there it seems Malone had more to offer but could only give that which fulfilled Burns’s vision.

What Alex Abramovich bemoans the most, are the half-stories and half-truths that will never add to a whole. Instead, one is left with a blurred vision of a music genre that has never reconciled its shared roots in the poor white and Black South, and instead rejoices in an (often false) nostalgia. Following is an accompanying conversation with Abramovich, that explores, beyond his written LRB piece and the specifics relating to Burns’s documentary, the wider history of segregation in vernacular music and the defining role played by the recording industry.

Alex Abramovich on the history of segregation in music in the US

Finally, this is not the same thing, but related, I think, in that it is illustrative of how music and recordings track the extreme social shifts of an era, particularly in respect to the African American experience, through the twentieth century and into the present. Recently, I read an extraordinarily interesting article, again in the NYT, that examines music – American folk music this time – beyond a matter of categorisation that tends to segregation and exposes instead blatant racism and hate, and considers the ensuing dilemma of how to deal with historical works, once popular and now despicable.

When the next time is now

“The Fire This Time” ed. by Jesmyn Ward (2016)

Recently, I enjoyed very much picking my way through this 2016 selection edited by Jesmyn Ward; someone I have been truly thrilled to discover in recent years. Presumptuous of me perhaps, but I think I have read enough of Ward’s work and garnered enough information about some of the known aspects of her life, to understand her concerns as a writer and how her identity as a Black Southern woman is the beating heart of her creative output.

A project that came out of Jesmyn Ward’s anger and frustration, not just at the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin (to whom amongst many she dedicates the book) but long simmering within from the violent deaths of young black men close, very close, to her. Collected are some of the voices of a generation of Black writers, in the middle of life like herself, who articulate in their own personal and creative way their anger, their fear, their grief, but never without hope. Her introduction expands upon her motivation and intentions, and is a valuable piece in and of itself.

Ward makes a further contribution of her own in an essay called “Cracking the Code”, which is a very interesting appraisal of her personal genealogy and is, in itself, exemplary of the intricacies of race and how it manifests over generations; not just biologically but in the stories told and assumptions made. Now, given her roots in the Mississippi delta, Ward knew enough from family lore to surmise a broad mix – African, Native American, Creole, European – but the results of a 23andMe test gave her pause for thought. Strongly identifying as Black all her life, and that it surely followed that her ancestry must lay predominately on the African continent, Ward was momentarily taken aback when the analysis in fact concluded her to be of thirty odd percent sub-Saharan African ancestry and in fact forty odd percent European. The discrepancy is relatively small, but it bothered her. Who am I?

But it was only a momentary distraction, for Ward then rationalises genetic information to be that which it is, one piece only of the puzzle – just as relevant, or more so, is the familial, societal, cultural history that formed her and which she embraces (and which embraces her back). Nor does she throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak – Heaney, Larkin, Harry Potter amongst others are more than welcome still in Jesmyn’s world. (And, Doctor Who! The Doctor? I ain’t ever met a Doctor fan that I didn’t like – even if my original Doctor is of an earlier regeneration.)

Also, and she doesn’t mention this, but any DNA databank is dependent on input, and is always expanding, and as time goes on that affects the analysis parameters. Should Jesmyn have another test now, some years on, she would almost certainly find that again she is not exactly that whom she thought she was. In some ways, the reading of the code, if not the code itself, is as fluid as the greater identity of any person through a lifetime.

How political can Black be?

Identity, very real yet permanently theorised upon; the reflection in the mirror or thoughts in the head, the heated arguments, the terminology, and beyond – who is what and who says, variance in usage and acceptability over time and from nation to nation; all this and more is almost impossible to escape these days, and just when one is convinced to be almost on top of it, or given up in despair, there it is again demanding to be considered again. For me, at least, that state arises again this time in reading an opinion article in The New York Times by Kwame Anthony Appiah; throwing a spanner in the works again.

Springing from an ongoing debate, some of it fair, and some provocative purely for the sake of provocation (this ranging from the mischievous to the malevolent) about the correct nomenclature when in comes to US Vice-Presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, born in California to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, Appiah’s thoughtful piece returns half-way home (for him) to the United Kingdom, where ethnicity has been historically approached differently and the matter much more black and white (my pun is intended), to construe his argument.

Appiah describes the “political Blackness” ideology, rooted in the early nineteen seventies and finding legitimacy at the latest in the eighties, and in the wake of recommendations from the Commission for Racial Equality; whereby Asians were officially categorised as Black. (In terms of Britain, important is that here we are talking predominately about South Asians – i.e. Indians, Pakistanis, etc. dispersed in the wake of Partition and the aftermath – whereas in America one would understand “Asian” to refer to those of East Asian, e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Southeast Asian, for instance, Vietnamese, descent.) While historically and unofficially, Black people were always seen to be anyone who was not absolutely white, that categorisation was then embraced by many in minority communities that were not sub-Saharan or from the African diaspora.

Under the “umbrella” of their Blackness, it is easy enough to understand that its proponents envisaged power, not only in numbers, but shared experiences and just grievances, mostly extending from the remnants of Empire and colonisation. It is also clear: there are disadvantages inherent in claiming too “big a church” for too “diverse a congregation” (my unoriginal metaphors). Appiah also agues on the point of the immense range of internal diversity; cultural and religious (e.g. consider alone India: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc., languages and dialects ad infinitum, socio-economic status and caste) that further complicate sympathies and allegiances.

Today the project still remains highly contentious – for every example of mutuality sought there is at least another of repudiation and offence. But, as an “idea” of inclusivity, it is not dead and that is something.

Capitalized upon

That was quick – so much for the debate I had hoped for! The New York Times will from henceforth capitalize Black when referring to people or cultures of African origin. (To which I made a rare comment asking for clarification concerning, for instance, indigenous Australians – being most certainly black/Black but not of African origin or least ways no more so than everybody else and not in the sense that the Times means. Suffice to say, no clarification was received!).

One could quibble endlessly with the (not very satisfactory) reasoning given, but it makes not much sense to do so – it is their publication and their choice, and certainly one that most reasonable people can live with.

I would only say, the debate may have lasted months in the newsroom (as per the internal letter to staff), but the public discussion certainly was not very long at all – we are just the loyal readers I suppose!

Herewith, a little digression in the interest of another of my grammatical eccentricities (faults!), and that is a tendency to be inconsistent with words with an -ise or -ize suffix – the former favoured/favored [sic] in British English, the latter American English. This comes to mind because I see now, in my first blog entry on this matter, I wrote capitalise and here capitalize.

Capitalising on the moment – Black or black?

a grammatical diversion

Being an inconsistency I too have noted in recent times, I link here to this NYT piece discussing the pros and cons of the adjective “black” as used in respect to race, being elevated, so to speak, to proper noun status; that is, a capitalised “Black”.

Not being one who is at all fundamental on this, though finding the grammar fuzzy, and also very aware of my own inconsistency (see any one of my previous blog entries), I would only say that the German capitalisation of ALL nouns has affected me (or infected me!) over the years and point out that it was, at the very least, a convention of the English language prior to the 19th century. Consider, for instance, the Constitution of the United States of 1787:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution of the United States – Preamble

Samuel Richardson’s “*Letters Written to and for Particular Friends*”

And then of course there are any number of literary examples; at the British Library there are gems in abundance, including this letter-writing manual of sorts from Samual Richardson, with fictional correspondence for all and every occasion, and that was to inspire his epistolary (and scandalous!) 1740 novel, Pamela.

As I say, I have not formed a definite opinion on this matter, but there is, I think, a certain linguistic elegance and SIMPLICITY beyond the political and social arguments parried in the NYT piece – though in this respect, it would be only consequential to extend the Black to include White and Brown (in context). But dare I mention all the Grey areas then open to dispute, and that social groupings (defined by common nouns) beyond those categorised by color (or Color) and sometimes deriving from adjectives and sometime not – eg. g/Gay, q/Queer, m/Migrant, r/Refugee – may have equally valid arguments. This could all lead to Man and Woman and all the subsets thereof, and I don’t know what J.K. Rowling would do with that…, and the Germans don’t know how lucky they are to have avoided THIS argument …but they have their own linguistic conundrum in dealing with matters of “race” – not to mention the little COMPLICATION of giving all their nicely capitalised nouns a GENDER!

Juneteenth

Much said of this Juneteenth in the last days, so I will just link here to an explanation at The New York Times, and here to a favourite NYT opinion writer of recent times, Jamelle Bouie – a young, black man with a lot to say, and who says it well – who gives his particular slant upon the celebration, and its place in commemorating the struggle for emancipation and freedom of black Americans.

To whet one’s appetite. I receive a newsletter from Bouie every week, with interesting stuff beyond his Times column, and he usually signs off with a “what I’m eating” bit which includes a recipe; giving away his delight in good food. Thinking about this and then reading this piece entitled – and I write it out because its says something – “A Juneteenth of Joy and Resistance”, in which four African-American chefs share their thoughts about this day, it is interesting to contemplate the celebratory role payed by food, especially when influenced by traditional and regional flavours, within a community. As one of those four, is the recently spoken of Eduardo Jordan, and the very special emphasis he places on West African cuisine in the “diaspora”, and his commitment to imparting to his guests (predominately white) its broader cultural significance.

Should one be hungry for more – food, knowledge or both – a favourable review of Padma Lakshmi’s new Hulu series “Taste the Nation” sent me to YouTube for a bonus episode (for Juneteenth) which has unfortunately now been removed. It was really very well done, and while focusing on the the culinary delights, gave some very interesting insights into the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina – their culture and language – and their efforts to preserve the traditions of their ancestors, West Africans forced into slavery.

Lynching & other crimes

A Guardian article has brought to my attention a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative entitled Reconstruction in America – 1865-1867, documenting the violence perpetrated against black people in the twelve year period immediately following the Civil War, in which the hopes and promises of emancipation and equality were squashed by a brutal white supremacy ideology.

This report is the prequel, so to speak, to their 2015 report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror that concentrated on the period after Reconstruction up to World War II.

Here is the video introduction, and would encourage all and everyone, as I will surely do, to dive deep into all the other material offered by the EJI, an organisation committed to a fight against racial injustice and mass incarceration.

llustration of EJI’s report, Reconstruction in America (http://eji.org/reconstruction).

I don’t think it would be untoward here to mention the originality and fine aesthetic of the animation – and in terms of the illustrations, just say Molly Crabapple.

An America Divided

Cover of “The Americans” by Robert Frank, Grove Press (2nd Printing, 1969)

At The New York Times an interactive photographic portrait of a photographic portrait – this latter, from the legendary 1959 book The Americans by Robert Frank. The cover of that book is a startling image of a street car in segregated New Orleans taken by Frank during a road trip through the United States in 1955-57, and the NYT piece by Arthur Lubow uses that image as the impetus for an interpretation and a comparative study against other works of visual art – exploring racial and social division, hierarchy, symbolism. I don’t need to say how powerfully this rings, but should mention how unwelcome Frank’s “America” was to critics of the day. Here is a link to a working print of the “New Orleans Trolley-car” from the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art – more generally, a great online resource for looking at Frank’s extensive work.