Expanding The Harlem Renaissance Through Radical Filmmaking

The Harlem renaissance presented questions about what it meant to be a black man in the early part of the 20th century. The works of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Claude McKay, Walter White, and many others. Their works focused on the possibilities and trajectory of black life America. They asked questions of how best to progress towards equality in this nation. However, their works centered largely on black men and masculinity. In the process of preserving these personal histories of men, they lost those of black women. Cheryl Dunye’s film The Watermelon Woman (1996) expands upon many of the themes of the Harlem Renaissance, giving voices to those forgotten by the masculine movement and expanding the human space of not only the Harlem Renaissance, but also her modern age.

One of the defining characteristics of the Harlem renaissance was the rejection of convention in art as a means to convey the personal truths and histories of black people in America. Simply, the art of a white culture could not properly convey what it meant to be black in that society. Dunye’s film, using poetic documentary within a larger fictional narrative, similarly rejects the conventions of formal documentary and conventional narrative cinema in order to tell a story that is far more about the filmmaker than the titular character. By diverging from conventional cinema, Dunye makes a space for her identity that did not exist within the conventional bounds. Her tale is one that creates human space for her not only as a black woman, but also as a black lesbian within her time. This documentary expands upon the human space and the artistic themes of the Harlem renaissance to ask similar questions of how black women and black lesbians exist in a society that is not only racially and sexually unequal, but goes further by reclaiming the personal histories of the women obscured by the Harlem Renaissance itself.

Dunye’s narrative focuses on her search to learn about a forgotten movie star only ever billed as “The Watermelon Woman.” This titular character, though an invention, serves as a representative of the women who were washed out of the Harlem renaissance by the masculinity minded titans at its forefront. Through this conceit, Dunye is creating human space not only for herself in her modern age, but giving light to the personal histories that were forgotten by the history books. Dunye's film retroactively expands the scope of the Harlem Renaissance by seeking to illuminate and elaborate on the life of the fictional Watermelon Woman. Even though the life in question is an invention, it does not matter because it represents the human space that was not considered in its own day. The Watermelon woman’s contrived story is representative of the personal histories of women not recorded in the official version of the Harlem Renaissance, women like Ida B. Wells.

         The film expands upon the themes and scope of the Harlem Renaissance in reclaiming the personal histories of the women of its time period as well as those of Dunye’s time. It is her act of making the documentary that allows her to tell her own personal history because her own identity and experience as a black woman are tied to the histories of those who came before her. In order for Dunye to truly create her own human space, she must consider and learn about the women who history left out. The Watermelon Woman works to expand the human space created by the Harlem renaissance by similarly denying artistic convention to tell a story of black womanhood and sexual identity that was not included in the recorded history of the period.

wc: 610

Pledged: Phillips Hutchison

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dunye, Cheryl, dir. The Watermelon Woman. First Run Features, 1996.

Fake News: Fossil Fuels Ended Slavery

Fake News: Fossil Fuels Ended Slavery

About a week ago the White House announced that Donald Trump will nominate a climate change skeptic with ties to the fossil fuel industry to serve as a top environmental adviser. Kathleen Hartnett White will serve as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The Council on Environmental Quality coordinates federal environmental efforts and works with agencies and White House offices in the development of environmental policies and initiatives.

She is very critical of the Obama administration's "imperial EPA" and pushed back against stricter limits on air and water pollution. She is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that has received funding from fossil-fuel companies that include Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron. In an op-ed published in The Hill newspaper last year this STANFORD educated woman wrote that, "The truth is that our bodies, blood and bones are built of carbon! Carbon dioxide is a necessary nutrient for plant life, acting as the catalyst for the most essential energy conversion process on planet earth: photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is an odorless, invisible, harmless and completely natural gas lacking any characteristic of a pollutant."

In addition to calling the Obama administration’s environmental policies a “deluded and illegitimate battle against climate change,” railing against the Paris climate agreement and attacking Pope Francis’ stance on global warming, in 2014, she said fossil fuels are to thank for ending slavery. I will repeat that one more time for the people in the back, she said FOSSIL FUELS ENDED SLAVERY. In a ‘research’ paper Hartnett White made the connection between “the abolition of slavery and humanity’s first widespread use of energy from fossil fuels.” She said “Fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery,” [...] “When the concentrated and versatile energy stored in fossil fuels was converted to mechanical energy, the economic limits under which all societies had formerly existed were blown apart.” 1

However critics have pointed out that the industrial revolution actually increased slavery in the modern world because the hunger for raw materials drove slavery in the American South and the subjugation of people around the world.  It is so important to understand the information we are learning in class because 1.) it happened, 2.) it has implications to today, and 3.) you will look dumb if you don’t understand historical truths and post a paper claiming fossil fuels ended slavery. Not only is it deeply troubling from an environmental perspective that a top political leader/ advisor has these environmental ideas, it is disturbing to see the deeply inaccurate historical and racial attitude she holds. Environmental policy is a modern way to continue systematic racial injustice in the United States (ie. Flint) and I fear that will only get worse with Kathleen Hartnett White in office.

Word Count 471

Rachel Farley

If you want to read her full paper it is called Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case and can be found at the link below…

https://www.texaspolicy.com/library/doclib/Fossil-Fuels-The-Moral-Case.pdf

1 Biesecker, Michael. "Trump to nominate climate change doubter as top environmental adviser." Chicagotribune.com. October 14, 2017. Accessed October 23, 2017. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-nominates-kathleen-hartnett-white-20171014-story.html.

21 Savage - The Avid Historian as Ever

Hello all, 

Recently, I have been listening to “Nothin New” by 21 Savage. The first time I played through it, I did not find that much in it. I was not really listening to it, and it just played in the background while I was reading something else, completing an assignment or the like. However, as I kept replaying it, liking the beat and the rhythm, the song started to scream this historical perspective to racism, oppression, and subjugation according to race and color lines. His chorus runs,

“Another nigga made the news, it ain't nothin' new

He done dropped outta school, it ain't nothin' new

He done got his first tool, it ain't nothin' new

Mama on that dog food, it ain't nothin' new

He smokin' weed and he changin', it ain't nothin' new

All his friends gang bangin', it ain't nothin' new

Got a pocket full of hundreds and they all blue

Another nigga from the hood tryna ball too,” (21 Savage, “Nothin New”)

And through it, he constantly points to this unsaid historical background to it all, “it ain’t nothin’ new” (21 Savage, “Nothin New”). Everything in the song (descriptions of the current political climate, the affects on people of color, and the wholesale attempted dehumanization of black folk) is considered within a context of nothing being new. 21 Savage constantly points back to the history of black and brown incarceration, how people of color were lynched and killed for being people of color, and how merely speaking is a crime as a person of color. In the end, one of the most evocative lines is when 21 Savage makes the move to (individually or not) devalue Christianity and how it has historically upheld different black communities in the US. In its stead, he raps, “Lost his faith in Jesus Christ, he prayin’ to a bandana” (21 Savage, Nothin New). In its stead, this institution of Christianity and more interpretatively the institution of state protection (police and the like) is replaced by a bandana (gangs), which gives himself and others a sense of protection against a racist system. Ultimately, everything within the song harks back to history, “it ain’t nothin’ new” (21 Savage, Nothin New); the murder of black folk by white hands has its place in history, the imprisonment of black folk (primarily men) has its place in history; and the need of protection also and consequently has its own place in history . . . “it ain’t nothin’ new (21 Savage, Nothin’ New).

Does colorism exist in 2017?

Does colorism exist in 2017?

In several of the texts we have read this first half of the semester, specifically in Homegoing and Soul by Soul, we see a preference for a certain skin tone. The lighter, and the whiter the skin tone, the better. Or have we? My first answer to this question would be yes, but the two main works of literature that we have read thus far, Homegoing and Soul by Soul, present different accounts of what skin tone represents.

In Soul by Soul, slaves at the market are characterized and divided. The men and women are divided, and then further divided based on things such as skin tone. Lighter-skinned Black men and women seem to fare better than darker-skinned men and women. Skin tone is what sets them apart. Darker-skinned men and women are assumed to be better at working in the fields that their lighter counterparts. Lighter men are seen are more fitting for less harsh work (mechanics, etc.), while lighter-skinned women often fetch the highest prices at the slave market because they are seen as being “delicate” and more beautiful. They are brought for the purpose of being in the house or being sexual objects for their masters. Interesting enough, a light-skinned Black person can be seen as “too White,” making it hard to sell that person for fear that they could easily run away.

In Homegoing, however, it seems as though White people are frowned upon, people do not understand why their skin is so white. Effia and some of the other people in the village are intrigued at the sight of white people, but not consumed by envy as one may think. They do not once say that they perceive white skin or lighter-skinned Black people as being more beautiful. When Adwoa Aidoo is mentioned as having light skin, she is not glamorized. Her physical characteristics are simply stated, as is every other person. Quey’s light skin tone is embarrassing to him because he does not fully fit in with the White or Black people. His lightness makes the Africans, especially his wife, see him as “weak.”

Does colorism exist today in 2017? I remember growing up and skin tone being a big deal, but the older I have gotten, the less important it seems. However, if people take an IAT on race, or implicit association test, the majority of people categorize darker people as being more violent and associated with more negative words. This means that without thinking about it, and when only giving seconds to chose an answer, most people get the same results. I provided a link for anyone wanting to take one to find out his or her results. You may be surprised.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexrk.htm

The Hidden Curriculum that Enslaves

The ideologies of slavery/subjugation in this country are far from dead, though they might look different.  I know this is something that we all really know and many of us truly understand, but is something that, perhaps more than before, I am observing with my own eyes.  This semester, I am going into a high school classroom to learn from the teacher, gain experience interacting with students, and ultimately see what teaching really looks and feels like.  As I sat in the back of the room one morning, my mentor teacher started to discuss the ACT with her students, and what she said took me aback.  “You shouldn’t strive to get a 36, that’s unreasonable, I’m going to tell you how to get a 24.”  What?  Not only is she explaining to the students that she is going to deprive them of an opportunity, of knowledge, of challenge, but she extending an idea that these students already hear from the system and many people in America: the idea that they – because they are black – have little to no capacity.  These children have as much capacity as I do, as children in Germantown do, as students in Texas and students in Asia.  These students can and should strive for great things in their life!  And they are taught that they should settle for less, settle for what seems reasonable.  I grew up in a family and a world where I was told I could achieve whatever I wanted.  These children are growing up in a world where they are told they can only achieve what others think they can achieve.  Because of the color of their skin.  With these toxic, horribly false, incredibly detrimental poisoning the minds of black and brown children in low-income schools, how can we even pretend to be confused why there is such a thing as an achievement gap?  All the money in the world cannot take back the words, the actions, the signals these kids are receiving about their abilities. 

            I was chatting with one of my mom’s friends here in Bryan, Texas, and she said something that broke my heart.  “Is it wrong for me to want to get ahead, or do I need to be content where I am?”  She’s been told her whole life, “Don’t strive for too much,” and she’s fighting with everything in her to not heed that hindering call.  Slavery is still here in America, in the form of limiting warnings and dehumanizing hidden curricula that attempt to discourage African Americans from achievement in this nation.  We enslave them with the idea that they have no capacity.  Our children are hearing it, taught it, even in school.  What are we going to do about that? 

Pledged: Katie Imperial WC: 444

Problems in Primary/Secondary education and the study of African American history

There is one big problem that needs to be addressed with regards to examining history in general, but African American history in particular. Too often, people tend to examine individual historical periods and events as isolated incidents, without ever trying to link a chain between them to draw historical connections and conclusions examining a more comprehensive scale. For example, the first World War and the second World War are usually studied in the mainstream as individual wars, often leaving out how interconnected the two global conflicts were. In short, the economic and social effects of the first war led directly to the second World War by setting the stage perfectly for the subsequent conflict to occur twenty years later. 

I will use the academic pariah of Ms. Applebaum, the middle school social studies teacher to illuminate the fact that the same goes for the history of African Americans in the United States. There are several different events that are studied throughout one’s primary/secondary education that are examined as isolated events, and in this way prove to be extremely problematic in understanding the development of African American history and these events’ relationships to present conflicts dealing with race.

The beginning of the Transatlantic slave trade, perhaps a snippet or two about slavery in between this, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th-15th amendments to the United States Constitution, and a perfunctory overview of the Civil Rights movement were all that people like myself learned about the history and legacy of African Americans in this country during my primary and secondary education. These events were not usually displayed as being linked together other than the fact that they occurred in chronological order that give the student a fragmented understanding that Africans were brought to America in the 1600s, enslaved people were liberated after the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement was perhaps the biggest battle in the 20th century to end de jure racism. On a separate, yet similar note, how many of us in sixth grade thought  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the entirety of the Civil Rights Movement? I never even heard about the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike until I came to Rhodes College.

What is ignored are the constant battles and confrontations of these issues by Black folks in America throughout the entirety of American history, which is seriously overlooked and ignored sometimes, reflected in the mainstream epistemology of ignorance. By examining these constant confrontations of ideologies, laws, and violence, students of the present can better understand current racial issues and responses to racism, as well as the develop the tools necessary to more effectively participate in these conversations. 

Pledged,

Warren Socher

Word Count: 448

When It's Right to Oppose Your Country

What does America stand for? What does any nation “stand for”? Our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” references the “land of the free and home of the brave,” but seems less interested in preserving the values of the United States as it does preserving the institution of the U.S. itself.

The military context is the nation under attack. The British had just occupied the capital and was bringing ships into the Chesapeake Bay. Francis Scott Key watched them bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It makes sense then that when he wrote a poem that honored the flag that flew over the fort, and the effort to protect it, that he did not honor the runaway slave that fought against his country. When they looked at the flag, they saw it as the flag of their enemies. They were antagonists in this story. They fought to overrun Fort McHenry and tear down the flag. Yet they also fought for “American values.”

            The fought for freedom. The British promised them freedom in exchange for their services. The government they opposed supported their enslavement. In the runaway slaves’ point of view America had a government that enslaved people.

            The presentation of the anthem at football games fits the meaning behind Key’s words. It is common for the flag to be displayed by a military color guard or for a fighter jet to fly over the stadium. Everyone in attendance, regardless of their personal beliefs, are expected to stand at attention. It is a clear display of loyalty to the U.S. as an institution.

            By kneeling during the anthem, Colin Kaepernick was resisting the unintellectual display and the violence he sees U.S. as an institution allowing. He said, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.” He referenced in a tweet the killing of Philando Castile, saying, "There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder” (1). Castile was killed by a servant of the U.S.  and the U.S government let the killer go free. By refusing to stand up America’s flag he is defying the spirit of the anthem. He is honoring the tradition of the runaway slaves in the third stanza who also opposed the flag of an oppressive country.  I hear a lot of people defending what he is doing as “American” or “free speech,” but what I think makes his statement so courageous is his openness to defy his country and injure Americans’ pride. He is treating the United States as more than an empty ideal, and more like the institution that it is and he is holding that country responsible of its failures.

Pledged, Matthew Coughlon

Works cited:

1.      http://www.bbc.com/sport/american-football/41530732

2.      https://theundefeated.com/features/morgan-state-student-documentary-star-spangled-banner/amp/

Grappling with Race Mentally

            Everyone has a certain way that they identify themselves. Whether it’s through our personality, your hometown, sexuality, or etc. We all use different aspects of our lives, which makes up how we identify ourselves. For many of us, whether we know it or not, our race plays in many ways how society views us and how we even view ourselves. This idea of identity was explored in Racial Formation when Susie Phipps lost a court battle to try and become legally identified as white. She thought that she was white her entire life, and now that she has found out that she has some black ancestors, she now must have to face this inner identity battle, to which she must decide whether or not she will be willing to embrace her blackness or live the rest of her life as a white one. Each of these decisions has both their pros and cons about them. This question of identity mixed race identity has been a tricky idea to completely grapple for centuries within texts, both fiction and non-fiction. What does it mean to be mixed race? How does one mentally grapple with the mental notion of blackness?

            To her this newfound blackness as a complete alteration of your identity, and has even bothered her so much that she even goes as far as to find legal vindication of her race. She needed the legal system to validate her complete and pure claim to her whiteness. She can easily pass in society as white woman, however this new identity has altered how she views herself. Now she now has to have this mental battle within herself. This highlights to many of the battle of thinking about what blackness is, and what it means to identity. To this woman it is obviously not a good thing to acknowledge because she goes to great lengths to prove her whiteness, even though she is only trying to prove her whiteness to herself. This shows us the mentality of what blackness is in society. Blackness is something that is not to be admired or celebrated because many in society have been conditioned to view blackness of undesirable and of no value socially.

            Mixed-race identity in America has been an ongoing discussion for centuries, because for many you cannot be more than one race. We have constantly been told that you have to choose one or the other. For Susie, even though she could choose to be White, now that she knows that she’s partially Black, she must mentally come to terms with this part of herself. She lived her whole life thinking that she was a White female, now she must wrap her head around this new identity that she has obtained.

WC:457

The Presence of Oppression

Earlier this week, former NFL coach and ESPN analyst Mike Ditka claimed that black people have not been oppressed in the last 100 years. The comments were made in response to the debate over athletes who are kneeling during the National Anthem. This article in The Washington Post reported on Ditka's comments which stated that "there has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of" and "you have to be colorblind in this country" because "opportunity is there for everybody" and the color of someone's skin has never been the problem. Ditka later tried to clarify his comments and claimed that he was sorry if he offended anyone. However he still opposes kneeling during the National Anthem and views it as disrespectful to our country. Ditka's comments strike me as completely inappropriate and disrespectful to people who must deal with the repercussions of racism and injustice. 

Ditka's claim that there has been no oppression in 100 years is not only extremely inaccurate, but it undermines the struggle and existence of countless people and communities across the country. Ever since slavery took roots in America, oppression and inequality have been built into the culture and foundations of this country. Specifically within the last 100 years, the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights Movement have exposed the overwhelming amount of systematic oppression in this country.

Additionally, Ditka's comments about people needing to be "colorblind" because there is plenty of opportunity for everyone, dismisses the idea of race entirely. This is troubling because ignoring the idea of race implies that racial differences are problematic. Failure to confront our differences further promotes racial division and oppression as there is an inability to acknowledge equality when there are undoubtedly discrepancies between individuals and communities. The desire to silence human differences has ensured continuation of racial tactics and inequality. There are very clear forms of oppression that have and still exist in this country and Ditka stating otherwise displays ignorance and lack of respect for those subjected to racism and oppression.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/10/10/mike-ditka-on-nfl-protests-no-oppression-in-the-last-100-years-that-i-know-of/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.dd30aa28ad7a

Pledge: Olivia Holmes

Hurt People Hurt Other People

While reading, “Beyond the Limits of Decency: Women in Slavery,” from Out of the House of Bondage, something that really stood out to me was the violence that White women faced at the hands of their husbands, and how this led to some of them abusing not only the house slaves, but their own children as well. Glymph says that “some evidence suggests that slaveholding women who beat their slaves and/or were beaten by their husbands, in turn, abused their own children”¹. I believe that this goes to show that hurt people hurt other people. Men beat their wives, the wives beat the slaves and children, or whomever else they can control, and the cycle repeats itself. Before reading this article I had not heard of slaveholders harming their own children, and was surprised to read that some of their own children were beaten to the same degree as the enslaved.

This article, without mentioning the word itself, depicts domestic violence in the Antebellum South. Today, while domestic violence, is more talked about and more resources are available for women and children to escape these dangerous situations, it still occurs. Sometimes women take matters into their own hands and fight back. This can either have a very beneficial outcome (escaping an abusive partner), or a very terrible outcome (being seriously harmed or killed).

Can abused White women in the Antebellum South then be blamed for hurting other people when they themselves were hurting and had no escape? We often hear about people seeking revenge on those that hurt them, and I would argue that in these cases, people are sympathetic to the abused even if they seriously harm the other person. Today we have outlets for escaping those situations, but did White women have those back then? Where could they go? Mental health, like domestic violence, is more talked about than it was years ago, but I expected to know more about the mental health of White women from readings. That topic has not been addressed directly in any of readings thus far. It would be very interesting to know more about the lives of the mistresses and children of slave owners who saw and endured so much (being beaten by the men in their lives, having to care for their husbands illegitimate children, seeing the violence inflicted on slaves by overseers and master, etc.) Were the women right to be cruel, no, but living their lifestyle would be enough to drive anyone insane.

Pledged

WC 413

Glymph, Thavolia. “Beyond the Limits of Decency.” In Out of the House of Bondage, 36. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003.