Tag Archives: race

Hurston and Engineering the Invisibility of Race

Posted on by
Reply

In Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston explores the ironic distance created between herself and the world by racism. Her claim that “the game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting” summarizes one of her main points, that there is an inherent tragedy in operating from a point of racial superiority (Hurston). Her anecdote about her white friend’s inability to understand jazz in the same way as her ends with her claim that “the great blogs of purple and red emotion have not touched him,” alluding to an emotional colorlessness attached to his whiteness (Hurston). His displacement within the black jazz club is not just unfelt because of his race, but because of an inbred blindness that has never been challenged in him. He is not refusing the music or it’s meaning; he can only hear “good music” because he has been trained to hear it as that and that alone (Hurston). Hurston sees this as almost tragic, the inability to access a layer of emotion that she clearly appreciates a great deal.

The absence of race, or a simulation of such a thing, also factors into Hurston’s view of the inescapable reality of race. Her statement that in certain moments “I have no race, I am me” calls back to her childhood realization of her own race, the moment she “was not Zora of Orange County anymore, I was now a little colored girl” (Hurston). The presence of race as a complication is a given, but she is able to displace its effects from her mind because of her perspective. She remembers what it is like to be in a non-racialized mindset, or at least one not racialized by her herself. This allows her to break apart her status as a Black woman in society, pulling out the positives while mitigating the negatives as much as possible. Her analysis gives her the tools to fight back on some level against the conditions in which she must live.

Where The Sidewalk Ends (and the Riot Starts)

Posted on by
Reply

The narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is, among his many trials, blocked on the sidewalk by a collection of items belonging to an elderly couple being evicted. His interpretation of the various items begins as “a lot of junk waiting to be hauled away” (Ellison 206). Though he learns that the items have significance to their owners, his read on the situation continues to involve the low quality of their belongings. The early description of the “old woman… wearing a man’s shows and a man’s heavy blue sweater” establishes a theme of this section’s narration, the narrator’s disdain for the items despite his wish that the elderly Provos be allowed to keep them (206). This is the central conflict in the narrator’s position, best evidenced by statements he makes that emphasize the shabby qualities of the Provos’ belongings while upholding their right to keep them. IM notes “a fragile paper, coming apart with age,” which turn out to be Brother Provo’s freedom papers (210). These are the final straw of indignation; when he realizes that the very symbol of an elderly man in his community’s freedom is being left on the ground like trash, he is disgusted but not yet stirred to speak. However, only when other men in the crowd begin to menace the marshal conducting the eviction does the narrator step in to try and control things with his rhetoric. His outrage is “only a bitter spurt of gall” until what he sees as the reputation of the Black community is challenged, at which point he takes on the role of mediator (211). In his own mind, the inspiration of seeing the Provos’ things strewn across the sidewalk allows him to step in and offer unseen perspective to those who may benefit from it.

However, the IM’s intentions may belie the truth of how he feels about himself and his ideology, as well as the ruling ideology. Even his mental categorization of the items that the Provos are having taken away is internally racialized; he separates items such as “‘knocking bones’” and “a small Ethiopian flag” from another group with such things as a child’s greeting card and newspaper clippings (209-210). There is a shame in the narrator’s recognition of these items, just as earlier in the chapter he had to slowly overcome his shame to enjoy the street vendor’s yams. When the narrator rhetorically asks the crowd “who’s being dispossessed?” he is trying to channel this assigned shame into anger, one on behalf of his community (216). His internalized anger at not being fully in touch with his community marries with the anger at his community that he has learned from his necessary dealings with a racist world. The significance of the freedom papers now becomes clear: they stand as a symbol of the lack of progression of the Black community as a whole, something which only the narrator is able to “pick up” on. His appeal to the crowd ends in violence against his best efforts not because he is a poor speaker, but because he has externalized an unknown inner rage where he thought there was only indignation.

NYT article on blackface

Posted on by
Reply

Fascinating article about the persistence of blackface in our own era. As I’m sure you know, there have been numerous scandals recently exposing incidents of whites “blacking up” at parties: VA Gov. Ralph Northam, for example.

This article looks at something more subtle: the range of uses of blackface, ranging from utterly uncritical and exploitative to extremely self-aware and critical uses (e.g., Spike Lee’s brilliant film Bamboozled). The whole enterprise resonates powerfully with Ellison’s novel, which features many encounters with the culture of minstrelsy and blackface, taking very seriously its appeal to a wide range of subjects (including Mary Rambo, as we’ve seen already).

PSA: as CUNY students you all have access to the New York Times for free. Use it: it’s basic mental equipment for navigating the complex world we live in!

 

The Mystery of the Invisible Whiteness

Posted on by
1
                                           
      I found that the most interesting part of Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda’s essay “On Whiteness and The Racial Imaginary” is the idea that “to argue that the imagination is or can be somehow free of race… acts as if the imagination is not part of me, is not created by the same web and matrix of history and culture that made ‘me.’” Similarly, it is very easy to imagine that the current moment in history is disconnected from the moments of the past, but we must ask ourselves if that’s a perspective that comes out of the myopic view that whiteness creates. These limits on creativity, be they literal creativity or the mental kind that allows one to better conceptualize the world around them, are intrinsically tied to race in the American consciousness.
      The work of Hurston itself is a great example of how race in writing is treated by white society. In describing her experiences growing up in the South, Hurston is far beyond making explicit the divide and differences between racial groups. Her very existence is split; for her Black neighbors her dancing is something to leave unacknowledged, while the White visitors to the town treat her as an amusement. In a way, this is a clear parallel to the way in which the reader with unexamined views on race may read Hurston. Rankine mentions that “writers of all backgrounds see the imagination as ahistorical, as a generative place where race doesn’t and shouldn’t enter” and this is something that writers even project onto each other. For Hurston to write about her youth, an inherently Black experience, would not raise any eyebrows among the (white) literary elite because it is assumed that a Black author would write on Black topics; the dialect that she uses phonetically in her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was only really objected by Black writers. White writers, by contrast, assume that a Black author is not only qualified to write about Black topics, but indeed almost required to do so. Although the tide of history has reversed these opinions somewhat, Hurston’s work is still representative of the unconsciousness with which whiteness accepts the limitations that it itself places on blackness.

The Bluest Eye, The Freest Women

Posted on by
Reply

     Like most books, Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye includes a pivotal scene where an eleven year old girl is welcomed into the home of three sex workers. You remember reading about that trope in your high school English class, right? In reality, this provocative interaction between Pecola, Poland, China, and Marie shows Pecola an alternative form of physical beauty that is more carefree and motivated by the women’s sexually liberated lifestyle.

     Pecola’s interaction with the three sex workers revolves around their freedom from standards of beauty, freedom from femininity, and freedom of sexuality. However, the casual reader might think from the descriptions of China getting ready that she desires beauty in the same way other female characters throughout the novel. Morrison writes, “China had changed her mind about the bangs… She was adept at creating a number of hair styles, but each left her with a pinched and harassed look. Then she applied makeup heavily… Oriental eyebrows and an evilly slashed mouth” (57-58). China takes actions to control her physical appearance, but her vanity is different than other characters’ in the novel. For instance, Morrison describes that black women like Geraldine, “hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free… they never cover the entire mouth [with lipstick] for fear of lips too thick” (83). Women like Geraldine represented in the novel take efforts to make sure their beauty hides their blackness. However, the only concern China has about her hair is that she doesn’t look “pinched or harassed;” she does not want to look weak or inferior.  She is a free woman and intends to look that way. Unlike the ideas of femininity that call for women to look beautiful to appease a man, China employs her physical beauty to make herself look strong – a trait women are never encouraged to emulate – even adorning an “evilly slashed mouth.” She does not primp herself to look “white” or even appealing. In addition to the above excerpt, the novel also mentions how “China [sat] in a pale-green kitchen chair, forever and forever curling her hair” (52). Rather than straightening her hair to emulate a white woman’s hair texture, she curls her hair. China also deliciously takes her time while getting ready. China is free to fuss over her appearance “forever and forever” unlike women who have socially acceptable lifestyles. China’s life is not spent caring for someone else like a spouse, a child of her own, or a white woman’s child. Her profession gives her the free time to care for herself frivolously and in a way that is not tightly bound to social conformity.

     Morrison employs the sex workers’ liberated primping to show the reader and alternative, and better relationship women can have with  physical beauty. However, some may claim that Morrison vehemently objects to all physical beauty without exception, including the sex workers’ primping. She writes in the section Spring, “[Pauline] was introduced to… physical beauty. Probably one the most destructive ideas in in the history of human thought… [which] originated in envy, thrived in insecurity” (122). Morrison critiques physical beauty but only disapproves of it in its most common form. Pauline’s relationship with physical beauty  is diametrically opposed to the sex workers’ more unusual relationship with it. Morrison writes that one of the problems with physical beauty is that it “thrive[s] in insecurity.” However to say that that China, Poland, and Marie’s beauty is “thriving” is a long shot. The women are described as old and fat (52); they do not fit the socially prescribed ideas of what it means to be beautiful. And though ugly, the women are confident, not insecure. Marie doesn’t care about her “bandy legs,” and believes she is attractive (53). Morrison asserts that the problem with physical beauty is that to look beautiful to others, a woman must first be insecure about her looks and desire outside validation. The sex workers don’t have this problem: they are “ugly,” confident women who can employ makeup and hair products either purely for their own pleasure and desires.

     Toni Morrison bravely writes about the appealing aspects of sex work; not only do China, Poland, and Marie refuse to conform to certain standards of femininity and womanhood, but the primping China does do is for personal satisfaction rather than to appease the patriarchal, white-supremacist society. Readers and critics alike shouldn’t sell Toni Morrison short and ascribe the author a simplistic, “burn your bra, burn your makeup” second-wave feminist philosophy. Morrison’s writing is admirable because she explores the complexities of feminine physical beauty without automatically bashing women if they want to put on lipstick or curl their hair.