My apologies for the late post.
This week, we discussed how both Genet and Kennedy challenge the social, cultural and political limitations of what it means to "be" Black in an international context. Both playwrights explode racial stereotypes in order to reveal the psychological and material injuries that Blacks of all nationalities have suffered in relationship to Whiteness over time. By using mirror images of stereotypes that both Whites and Blacks have of one another, Genet attempts to use the stage as a place for Whites to reflect on their personal and collective relationship to the oppression of Blacks. Kennedy challenges how Blackness is determined when one's skin color and world-view are indeed "White." Hopefully both playwrights help us understand the complex social relationships that must be considered when we think about race as a lived identity.
With these ideas and our class discussion in mind, how do you feel one lives a racial identity? What is it that determines "Blackness," "Whiteness" or "otherness"? How are we socialized to know when we are in the presence of something that is effectively "Black" or "White" and how does nationality shape this discussion. As usual, you can refer to your everyday lives and popular culture.
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From my own personal experience I tend to see one's degree of blackness (in a US context) as proportional to their distance from what is considered the norm or "American." I mean by this that growing up my experience with black people was almost exclusively limited to people who's families were of Caribbean descent. Therefore their food, language, and even style of dress often broke with what is considered the normative American culture make-up. I mean I don't think anyone would truly argue when I say that jerk chicken, curry goat, or oxtails are not considered a part of a traditional American cultural meal. Therefore when, during high school, and in college I met people who's families reach back generations in the continental United States, my perception of their blackness as being more closely connected with American (read white) cultural values was questionable. Back home despite being born and bred in the Bronx when a Jamaican friend would call me a Yankee i was highly insulted. However, those same things that made me a Yankee made the people around me African-Americans. To some degree I think that is where I see the line drawn between black and African-American. I tend to more closely identify with black than African American, only because I was raised around black people who were not or did not consider themselves American, just black. African-American to me involves the decision to identify yourself with the United States.
I think for the most part that "blackness" and "whiteness" are sets of characteristics used by someone. The first thing that comes to my mind is the kind of environment a person grows up in? What school did they go to? These kinds of questions have a profound affect on someone's personality. For example my older sister went to a very diverse high school and another sister and I went to high school in the inner city, now we act "black" or more "black" than my other sister. She acts white in that she talks "proper", she just doesn't seem to come from the ghetto and I think that's due to her exposure to diversity. If all you're surrounded by the ghetto and its rhetoric, then you're going to act a bit more "black" than someone who grew up in the burbs and had white friends growing up.
Here are some thoughts from my personal experience:
I've always been told that I dance like a white boy (meaning that I can't dance).
Even my white friends call me white when I do something that has a pronounced nerdiness or lack of rhythm to it.
From this, I deduce that society associates Blackness with fluid movement and an overall smoothness and style. Whiteness, on the otherhand, is the lack of rhythm and the possession of geeky or nerdy qualities.
Yesterday I watched a clip from Fox News in which M-1 (of Dead Prez) was defending the "stop snitchin'" campaign against another Black guy who was dressed in a suit and talked really proper. I can really imagine someone from a really bad neighborhood who witnessed firsthand police brutality and harassment accusing this dude of "acting white." M-1 himself seemed to be kind of suggesting it. I guess it's because this guy was really arguing for "the man," against what M-1 kept referring to as "our communities." Really though I think the guy just believed that drug murders needed to be solved, and justice needed to be served in urban neighborhoods. It's funny that his education level marks him as acting "white." However I do think one could make a case for his not acting truly Black because he was knowingly on a show which promotes the status quo and he was playing the role (so it seemed to me) of the "good negro" so Fox News could continue to claim to be "Fair and Balanced." So I could see how someone could see him as a traitor. But at the same time I'm not sure Cam'ron is blacker than him because he wouldn't report a serial killer living next door to the police (yeah, watch last sunday's 60 minutes). That just seems stupid. But then again, to a lot of racist white people stupidity connotes Blackness. So....I don't know. I know I had a point at the beginning of this.
Well, I think that most people are trained to read race in a very superficial way because its easiet that way when, in reality, I think we find people in life who obviously can't fit into a box of blackness or whiteness. I've grow up in enevironments that were mostly black, african-americans, but most of them self-identified as just being black, nothing more, nothing less. because it was such a community unto itself there were certain rules for blackness that included a type of colloquial speech, a relaxed and stylish way of dress, eating certain foods, listening to certain music and being interested in things that were proclaimed black enough. it was a very limiting world but i think the people felt most safe with people they could easy identify with on clear terms. also, it empowered them to have controlled over the politics of their identity.
the simple fact of the matter is that race is part of a socialization which we all are a part of. a black child who is adopted as an infant by a white family will talk like the white family. it will adopt the mannerisms of its parents. years down the road that child may or may not serch out those of her own race, but her socialization is that of a white person, whether or not she wants to subvert that. i feel that more than knowing what is balck or white, we know what is different from us. When I was in Washington, D.C. over the summer, I was on the subway and there was someone who was an albino on the train. it was interesting, because i began to wonder what race she actually was. having no pigment, what would be the first reference to her race, one was forced to look beyond that. was her hair an indicator? perhaps her facial structure? She was on the train with a bunch of black girls her age, and she talked just like them. they all got off on a station in Northeast, along with a bunch of other black people. But it was interesting, because as soon as the initial indicators of "other" are removed, I was drawn into a need to somehow classify her.
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