Jazz

I use the term "jazz" here not so much as a term for a musical art form, as for a mode of being in the world, an improvisational mode of protean, fluid, and flexible dispositions toward reality suspicious of "either/or" viewpoints, dogmatic pronouncements, or supremacist ideologies. To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any poliicing of borders and boundarites of "blackness," maleness," "femaleness," or "whiteness." Black people's rage out to target white supremacy, but also ought to re realize that blackness per se can encompass feminists like Frederick Douglass or W.E.B. Du Bois. Black people's rage should not overlook homophobia, yet also should acknowledge that heterosexuality per se can be associated with so-called "straight" anti-homophobes--just as the struggle against black poverty can be supported by progressive elements of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

--Cornel West, Race Matters, 1994, Vintage Books, pp. 150-151

How Slavery Dehumanizes the Master

My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,--a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business, she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music. 

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of ha rsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon. 

--Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Ch. 6. Retrieved November 26, 2008 from: http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/06.html

Du Bois on Double-Consciousness

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, --a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

--Du Bois, quoted in Cornel West, Race Matters, 1994, Vintage Books, p. 138.

De Tocqueville on Race in America

I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the freer the white population of the United States becomes, the more isolated it will remain.

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835, quoted in Cornel West, Race Matters, 1994, Vintage Books, p. 135.

Relating Across our Human Differences

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.

--Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, 1984 quoted in Cornel West, Race Matters, 1994, Vintage Books, p. 93.

bell hooks on white terrorism

    "Returning to memories of growing up in the social circumstances created by racial apartheid, to all black spaces on the edges of town, I reinhabit a location where black folks associated whiteness with the terrible, the terrifying, the terrorizing. White people were regarded as terrorists, especially those who dared to enter that segregated space of blackness. As a child, I did not know any white people. They were strangers, rarely seen in our neighborhoods. The "official" white men who came across the tracks were there to sell products, Bibles and insurance. They terrorized by economic exploitation. What did I see in the gazes of those white men who crossed our thresholds that made me afraid, that made black children unable to speak? Did they understand at all how strange their whiteness appeared in our living rooms, how threatening? Did they journey across the tracks with the same "adventurous" spirit that other white men carried to Africa, Asia, to those mysterious places they would one day call the "third world"? Did they come to our houses to meet the Other face-to-face and reenact the colonizer role, dominating us on our own turf?
      Their presence terrified me. Whatever their mission, they looked too much like the unofficial white men who came to enact rituals of terror and torture. .. . .
      In the absence of the reality of whiteness, I learned as a child that to be "safe," it was important to recognize the power of whiteness, even to fear it, and to avoid encounter. There was nothing terrifying about the sharing of this knowledge as survival strategy. . .
     Even though I live and move in spaces where I am surrounded by whiteness, there is no comfort that makes the terrorism disappear. All black people in the United States, irrespective of their class status or politics, live with the possibility that they will be terrorized by whiteness."

--bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination" in White Privilege: essential readings on the other side of racism. 2nd ed. Ed. by Paula S. Rothenberg, 2005, Worth, New York, pp 22-23.

Man with a Guitar on the Train

"It's taken me 11 years to figure out how to play this thing and avoid the police."

"I love all the people--the Puerto Rican people, the White people, the Mexican people, the crackheads."


The middle-aged, black man sitting across from me with the Nike fitted and blue hoody jacket is laughing his ass off. I am, too.

"Who can guess who sang this song?" Then he starts strumming that old Latino favorite and belting out, "Poh-lice Navidad, Poh-lice Navidad. . ."

I wanted to say, "Richie Valens." But I was almost positive that was wrong. And then it would come off as racist or something because that's the only old, famous Hispanic singer a white girl would know. And then I would be drawing attention to myself. . .

So this other guy shouts out, "Jose Feliciano" Was that a mistake or what? Especially since he said it in a serious sort of way. Most people know better than to play into these people's games. The rest of us watched on, always interested to see what'll happen.

But the man with the guitar responded, "You didn't hear what I said? Police Navidad."

A man gives him some change. "You got the idea, man."

Then he starts walking up and down the aisle with his bag open. "I take Mexican, African, food stamps, turkey leftovers, weed (if you have it), college credits, school lunches."

He sits back down at the other end of the train from me. "This is for the white lady with the brown coat on," as he looked at me. (There was only one other white lady on the train.)

"I've got Sunshine
on the #2 Train.
I guess you say,
you must also do cocaine.
My girl, my girl
Talking about that white lady, my girl."

"I love all the people. This is for the Chinese lady standing in the middle of the train. I learned Chinese songs. I checked out 2 books from the library. This is what they taught me."

"And they were Kung-Fu fighting. Dahnnanana, Dahnanana"

Black Application

Last year, my 9th grade students in the Bronx came up with an application to be black. Here it is:
(Thanks, Shakiaria, for giving me permission to post it.)
_____________________________________________________________

Black Application

Name:

Mothers Address:

(usually Black Kids Dont Leave they mama house till they get kicked out) [age mim 3O+]

BBM pin: [Blackberry Messsenger] (Note : one aspect of being black is owning a BLACKBERRY ! if not pls run to your nearest phone store & Negotiate with the clerk .. Black ppl ALWAYS negotiate EVEN IF THE ITEM IS on sale .

1.Have You ever Shoplift? if so list how many times

2.How Many Times have you been arrested?

3.How Many warrants do you Have?

4. How Many Tickets Have You Not paid?

5. When is Your Next Court date?

6. Do You Have A Cousin Named Shaquana?

7.How Many R. Kelly CD's Do you Own?

8. Do You Use the Word "N-----" after every sentence?

9. Do You Drink a 4O with every Meal?

1O. Your Dream as a A Lil Kid, was 2 be in the NBA? (Guys ONLY)

11. Do You own a Frying Pan? (every black person Love to fry)

12. How Many ppl do u owe money to?

13. How Many Times have you changed your phone number
in a month?

14. How Many Baby Mothers Do You Have?

15. Do You feel there are kids out there you might not know about?

16. Do you Have a BJ's Membership Card? if Not Please go register for one A.S.A.P !

Please Be aware That Your Application would Not Be submitted if Your answers do Not Meet the required criteria!

Bonquisha Latique Laray Jackson
Supervisor of "I want 2 Be Black"offices

___________________________________________
There were other things in previous drafts that didn't make it to this final version:

17. How much watermelon is in your fridge?
18. What's your favorite chicken spot?
19. List all your family members--through birth or marriage, all halfs, steps, etc. (There were 3 pages for this part.)

New York City irony

The organizer of the African American Day Parade in Harlem (The Largest Black Parade is America) is Abe Snyder.

When they mentioned it at the community meeting (where I was the only white person out of a group of eight black people), I was the only one to display shock and dismay. They told me, "You must be new to the neighborhood."

Chinese School vs. Black School vs. White School

African-American father to five-year-old daughter: You see? That's why I send you to a Chinese school. Because those Chinese kids know how to do math. You gotta know how to do math if you want to make something of yourself. If I sent you to a black school, you'd just turn into a crackhead. If I sent you to a white school, you'd turn into an asshole. But those Chinese kids, man, they know how to do shit.

--4 Train

From the blog Overheard in New York

A Sin And A Shame: Soul Voyeurism* And Harlem “Gospel Tours” [Racialigious]

Some quotes from a great article by Fiqah, originally published at Possum Stew
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. . .when the tourists watched the choir and the other attendees with that peculiar mixture of fascination, fear and envy that White people in spaces of color often seem to have.
 . . .

Here, an excerpt from an account by a  White tourist from London**  who went to a Harlem church specifically for the music:

I meet Tim Rawlins at the Memorial Baptist church choir practise. He’s rare proof of the fact that white men can sing gospel. He says I’ve got to surrender to the music – feel it – and forget I’m English.

That statement, which positively reeks of cultural fetishizing, gave me a headache. Forget you’re “English” (read: White and proper) and “surrender” (is it attacking you?) to the wild, untamed Black Black Blackity Blackness of the music. Hallelujah, let the Othering begin.

. . .
The unexamined sense of entitlement that accompanies the idea of White people being welcome in any space is the factor that makes these tours possible. (I’m fully convinced that if 100 casually-dressed and snap-happy Black Americans rolled up into a Lutheran church on a Sunday in Haarlem,  the ensuing outrage at their gall would cause an international incident…but I digress.)

The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kingcaid

"My teacher was a woman who had been trained by Methodist missionaries; she was of the African people, that I could see, and she found in this a source of humiliation and self-loathing, and she wore despair like an article of clothing, like a mantle, or a staff on which she leaned constantly, a birthright which she would pass on to us" (16).

"This education I was receiving had never offered me the satisfaction I was told it would; it only filled me with question that were not answered, it only filled me with anger.  I could not like what it would lead to: a humiliation so permanent that it would replace your own skin. And your own name, whatever it might be, eventually was not the gateway to who you really were, and you could not ever say to yourself, "My name is Xuela Claudette Desvarieux." This was my mother's name, but I cannot say it was her real name, for in a life like hers, as in mine, what is a real name?

My own name is her name, Xuela Claudette, and in the place of the Desvarieux is Richardson, which is my father's name; but who are these people Claudette, Desvarieux, and Richardson? To look into it, to look at it, could only fill you with despair; the humiliation could only make you intoxicated with self-hatred. For the name of any one person is at once her history recapitulated and abbreviated, and on declaring it, that person holds herself high or low, and the person hearing it holds the declarer high or low."

Sign in Harlem

Being Black in Lebanon

Being black in Lebanon means you’re a servant.

It means that if you’re sitting on the bus, people will solicit you to come to their house and clean for the going rate of 7,000 L.L./hour (a little less than $5).

It means that if you’re walking with your white friend, and she’s carrying her bag or her baby or her groceries, you will get yelled at for not doing your job.

It means if you’re at a restaurant with non-black people, the wait staff will never ask for your order or expect you to pay.

It means people will ask you, “Are you Sri Lankan or Sudanese?”, and when you answer “American” in a perfect native-speaker American accent (because you don't speak any other language), people will ask, “But are you Sri Lankan or Sudanese?”

It means you are free game for men to grab and touch you.

It means you will be called ugly and “slave” to your face. (Actually this requires an explanatory note. The word “3bd” literally means slave or servant in Arabic. The common name 3bdallah means “Servant of God”.  Arabs use this word to refer to black people. Instead of saying the color black, “aswad”, from which the country name Sudan comes, people say “servant/slave”.)

If you're coming for a visit, be prepared. It helps to not speak Arabic. It's tiring, frustrating, upsetting, offending to know the things they are shouting/whispering/chiding at you on the street and in the homes of your hosts.

Frederick Douglass & Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon

            My eighth-grade students at the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon walked in to find a question on the board.  This was the routine.  They opened their journals and started to write their response to, “How does slavery dehumanize?” When they shared their responses, they started with,

“The masters treated them like animals.”

“They would beat them for no reason.”

“They would take the women and rape them.”

“They would separate them from their family members.”  

Then I read to them the passage about Frederick’s new mistress, Sophia Auld.

She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. . . . The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.[1]

The big bully of the class, Danny, raised his hand and said, “Miss, that’s me. Before we had a maid, I was a nice person.  When we first got her, I treated her nicely.  But now, I just boss her around. I throw things on the floor on purpose, and make her pick them up. I have been dehumanized.”

I found that even after a couple of weeks, I, myself, became like my Lebanese friends, considering it normal to ignore a person because she was the domestic help.  Later, I started attending a church in Beirut where a good third of the congregation are foreign workers. It took a while for me to regain my humanity. I'm still in recovery.

---

[1] Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Ch. VI, Document maintained at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/ Autobiography/06.html by the SunSITE Manager. 
Last update 5/14/97. SunSITE Manager: manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu, Accessed on 10/30/2007.