Tuesday, February 5, 2013

My mission - if I choose to accept it

I am two and a half months shy of 35 years old.
Before I die, would it be possible to read all of the National Book Award Winners in Fiction and Nonfiction?
Only one way to find out. 

These folks could benefit from reading Barbara Fields

I don't think Barbara J. Fields is right about everything, but her analysis of race as an ideology, and her call for historians to be clearer - indeed harder - about the ways they write about race are both very important. I think the contributors to this NY Times exchange on Black public intellectuals could have benefited from taking seriously some of the points Fields makes in her older essays, which have been republished in the book she co-authored with her sister, Racecraft.

Fields has a few main points to consider when thinking about and writing about "race" in America:

1) Race is an ideology, which is different from an idea and from propaganda and information. In essence, an ideology derives its meaning from everyday social interactions, and it is at that level of human interaction at which ideologies are made and remade. I tend to think of ideologies as frameworks through which people understand who they are, or maps that people use to navigate their social worlds. The clearest example of an ideology I can think of is religion, or a system of thinking and acting predicated on faith, and through which adherents order their lives and understanding of the world. Race serves a similar function. It is social and ideological; it is real, not because of science or biology, but because people make it real through social interactions and history.

2) Race has history. Fields spends a lot of time explaining this, but in essence, her main idea is that race is not metaphysical, ahistorical, or timeless. It came into existence at certain times for specific economic, political, and social reasons; and people made and remade it over time. Along these lines, race does not "have a life of its own," nor is it responsible for historical action. The best example Fields has of this is that race did not make slavery; slavery made race. If race continues to have meaning after slavery ended that is because people found new social practices in which racial ideology had meaning. In the US, Jim Crow segregation and ghettoization are the two most powerful social-historical phenomenon that have made and remade race over time.

3) For Fields, liberal and progressive intellectuals perpetuate a sloppy understanding of race and veiled sinister practices (her word is evil) when they insist on analyzing "race relations," which Fields rightly criticizes as an undefined system of social interaction, and when they push for diversity initiatives in curriculum and admissions. (I agree with her first point about race relations, but I disagree with her critique of affirmative action and multicultural education. Both do need to be much more specific with respects to how they deal with histories of racial ideology, but that does not mean that the mission of race-based affirmative action and multicultural pedagogy perpetuate the evils of racism.)

She makes many other provocative points, and this is a very rough summary, but I think the contributors in the above mentioned NYT exchange could stand to think more about what she says about racial ideology.

As I read the exchanges, only the scientists and the historian really wrestled with the socially constructed historical nature of racial ideology. (I am not sure exactly what the political scientist's and the religious studies scholar's point was.) Scholars who identify as Black - either because of their personal history or their political and personal ideology - have to fashion ways that their intellectual and professional work does or does not speak to that particular social ideology, and in what ways. While there is certainly not one way to "be Black" - as an intellectual or otherwise - there are certain socially and historically shaped ways - always multiple and always contested - in which Black people understand themselves and their wider world. Like Fields says, those frameworks are products of history and they exist in time and space. An intellectual who identifies as Black and who wants to connect particular social and political issues that some Black people experience to wider discourses and debates needs to be clear and conscious of the multiple communities she represents and addresses. I don't think this is anything new, and what that does or does not have to do with racial ideology depends on social context and history.

The problem with this NY Times exchange is that it made race a rarefied, metaphysical "thing" that Black public intellectuals either spoke to or ignored.

At their best, the participants in the exchange added context and specificity to their responses. They actually explained what it means to think about and make sense of racial ideology and who Black people are - politically, culturally, socially - in time and space.

(C) Brian Purnell, 2013

Monday, February 4, 2013

Rast Trent in a VW - Is It Racist When a White (American) Immitates Jamaican Patois?

I'll answer the above question in a real weak way - it all depends, but in this case, not really. Frankly, I think the VW add that has gotten so much attention is more silly than sinister.

Here's the premise: a predominantly white setting - an office park, perhaps in the American mid-West, which features what appears to be a nearly all white, all make work force. One man is perhaps American, perhaps of east Asian descent. A handful of white women work there too.  A white man from Minnesota imitates Jamaican patois as he goes around, smiling and spouting funny sayings to encourage everyone to be push away their Monday morning doldrums. In one clip he tells a clearly frustrated female colleague to "turn that frown the other way." The character is goofy and when I see it, I don't see anything that remotely resembles Jamaican or West Indian people, or even an attempt to mimic Jamaican people. If the presentation of a clearly non-Jamaican person tried to do that - in satire or even in an exploitative way - that would be, as NY Times columnist Charles Blow said, "black face with voices." But I don't think that's what is happening here.

This commercial spoofs Americans and Westerners, mostly white, but perhaps of any color, who adopt a cartoon-like version of West Indian and Caribbean style and aesthetics as a means of stepping outside their own seemingly humdrum social and professional worlds. Think of the American tourists who spend a week in Montego Bay and braid their hair and burn their skin as a means of vacating from their everyday lives of work and kids and commuting. I think the ad makes fun of those people more than anything or anyone.

A clearly satiric - and I think hilarious - spoof of white Americans "playing Jamaican" is Andy Samberg's character, "Ras Trent."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcK0MYgnHjo

Samberg is much clearer about who is the butt of his parody: white privileged college students who play at being Rastafarian as a means of rebelling against class, religious and parental conformity.  But Ras Trent and the character in the VW commercial are two sides of the same coin - privileged Americans with money who escape via what they imagine to be authentic, carefree, happy Jamaican culture. In truth, both the VW and the Ras Trent spook tell us more about the vapidness of those privileged Americans than about Jamaica or its people.          

Before I saw the VW add, I heard about it on the Public Radio International radio program, "The World." The podcast is available here:

http://www.theworld.org/2013/02/is-it-racist-for-a-white-guy-to-speak-jamaican-patois/

The podcast features an interview with Karen James, a journalist in Kingston, Jamaica. Her analysis is smart and basically, without directly saying so, I think she lets-on that the reason many Jamaicans are not offended by this add is that they are laughing at silly Americans making fools of themselves wasting money getting high and drunk and what have you during their Caribbean get away.

There are real exploitative issues at work in Jamaica's relationship with the wider world, namely that a place like Jamaica faces problems of debilitating poverty while at the same time serving as an international playground for massive levels of conspicuous consumption through its tourism industry.

Unfortunately, the VW commercial has not prompted conversation about that type of economic exploitation and imbalance.

And this is where I part ways with Karen James's analysis. She welcomed the VW commercial as a positive presentation of Jamaica and Jamaican people. (She even made an interesting argument about how the commercial uplifts Jamaican patois as authentic language, although it is ironic that a white American male playing Jamaican becomes the international vehicle through which Jamaican linguistics attains legitimacy.) As a journalist beset with the everyday problems Jamaicans face - poverty in the midst of plenty, and crime, violence, economic segregation - she no doubt saw this commercial as a chance to embrace a lighter side of life in her home, the side in which Jamaicans promote positivity and happiness to the jet-setters, wedding parties, spring breakers, and middle and working class vacationers who come to the island's white beaches to spend a week or so forgetting about their first-world problems. Perhaps, for a change, a spoof of how silly vacationing Americans look when they bring back their sing-song West Indian speak to their banal office parks can offer beleaguered Jamaicans a respite from their troubles. I can't fault her for feeling that way.

But I wish that instead of debating whether or not the VW add is racist, Americans could have a serious talk about how economic exploitation shapes life Jamaica, and about how international trade policies and histories of colonialism make possible that inequality, as well as Americans' enjoyment of it via tourism. In short, let's have some intelligent national talk about the themes raised in the 2001 documentary film, Life and Debt.

Because just like VW will laugh all the way to the bank through this parody of Americans playing West Indian,  someone is getting rich off all of the decadence American tourists experience during the sun fun weeks in Jamaica.

And it certainly isn't the vast majority of Jamaicans.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Amituofo - Blessings from the heart

This weekend my family and I drove to New York City to celebrate the 100 day naming ceremony for my niece, Zoe Amaez. My brother-in-law, Daniel Amaez, is a Buddhist disciple and student of Shi Yan Ming, the founder of the USA Shaolin Temple. Danny and his wife, Diana, held Zoe's naming ceremony at the Temple, and it was a beautiful event filled with good food, family, friends, and all-around positive vibes.

In this, my first blog post in a very long time, I wanted to share a meditation that I read posted on a wall in the Temple. I think it is a standard reflection in Chan Buddhism. When I read it, I found it so simple and inspiring.

"Before I was born, who was I?
After I am born, who am I?
Respect yourself, and everyone will respect you.
Understand yourself, and everyone will understand you.
There are mirrors all around you:
Strive to see and understand yourself.
Strive to have the heart of a Buddha.
Stop doing bad things, only do good.
Do whatever you can to help others.
In these ways you help yourself.
Help yourself, and you help the world."

During the naming ceremony, Shifu, which is the term for "Master," or even "Teacher," and is the title most people use when speaking with Shi Yan Ming, explained some principles of Chan Buddhism. "Amituofo," is a common term members of the Temple use in many difference scenarios: when greeting each other, or visitors; when entering or leaving the Temple; before they execute a Kung Fu form. Another disciple invited me to have a drink of Chinese "wine" with my brother-in-law and a few other members of the Temple. "Amituofo," can even mean cheers, or bottoms-up. When Shifu talked about Amituofo durint Zoe's naming ceremony he explained that all faith traditions are beautiful, and so are all people. "Jesus Christ is wonderful," Shifu said. "Christianity, is beautiful." In his explanation of Chan Buddhist philosophy, no hierarchy of belief existed. All Gods, all beliefs, all people were good and excellent, and all paths to peace were beautiful.

The entire spirit of the ceremony and the people just made me smile. "Do whatever you can to help others. In these ways you help yourself. Help yourself, and you help the world."

Amituofo!