April Joyner

Yesterday evening, I came across a novel thing, indeed: a “Black people do X” statement I actually hadn’t heard before:

https://twitter.com/aprjoy/status/335165865223933952

Who knew we didn’t like cats? Well, anyway, I’d like to compile a list of what black folks (supposedly) do and don’t do. I see it as a service project: just so those of other hues will be aware.

Kerry Washington, in a New York Times profile

Kerry Washington, on Django Unchained

(via npr)

Manishtana Rison, as told to New York magazine

Wow. There is so much to unpack in this quote. Perhaps I’ll try to do so at a later date.

(Source: New York Magazine)

Jelani Cobb, “Barack X,” at the New Yorker

npr:

“I don’t like this expression ‘First World problems.’ It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”

—

Teju Cole (via semperes)

This is a salient point, and it’s something I hadn’t thought of.

(Source: thewhiskeypropagandist)

So I just finished reading this post about black hair and the Olympics at Racialicious, via the blog’s Tumblr. I was going to leave a comment, but it turned into a mini-essay, so I’m posting it here. Let me just say from the beginning: I have little patience for people’s prescriptive notions of how black folks should present themselves, even when they’re well-intended, as in the post at Racialicious. Contrary to popular belief, not every black woman has a neurosis about hair, but sometimes I feel we like to project that onto black women by default.

Before I launch into my essay, let me excerpt a relevant portion of the Racialicious essay:

Beyond my skepticism about the practicality of a skull saddled with multiple packages of Indian Remy in elite competition (and a testament to our excellence is that we still slay), I am concerned about the witness it offers of our esteem, the invidiousness of European beauty standards, and the message our adaptations to them send young black girls interested in sport. I am saddened that so many of us equate looking our best with extension-assisted styles. Must we weave, wig, braid in extensions before we hit the pitch, track, mat, slough? I don’t buy that the ubiquity of yaki is about convenience. Show me the receipts. Only thing that accounts for our epidemic edge-sacrifice is history. We been making our way up the rough side of the mountain since the Middle Passage. Let’s have an honest conversation about what we do not because the world is watching but because we are, would-be Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryces and Sanya Richards Rosses. I’m not proposing a ban on sew-ins but having a conversation about our wholescale investment in them even in the most illogical of circumstances.

Certainly, I understand these concerns: “the witness it offers of our esteem, the invidiousness of European beauty standards, and the message our adaptations to them send young black girls interested in sport.” However, at the end of the day, I think elite athletes are going to, and should, wear their hair however it feels most comfortable to them. Appeasing image-conscious black folks should be the furthest thing from their mind when they’re on the track, the field, or the court.

To dive in a little deeper: I think we, as black folks, should stop expecting public figures to craft their physical image to uphold our standards of black pride. Ultimately, while this piece has a much nobler purpose than the (very few) petty comments on Gabby Douglas’s hair, it’s just another variety of the same syndrome. Vanity is a complex thing. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might favor wearing a weave, and it can’t all be boiled down to “She thinks white is right.” There’s an ugly history behind many of the hairstyles black women favor, but there’s also a tradition of creativity, community, and industriousness, which are on full display in barbershops, salons, and hair shows. It’s not fair to throw out the latter to emphasize the former. Using someone’s hairstyle as a proxy for their level of racial self-esteem is simply wrongheaded. Though the author is not doing that explicitly, she is doing so implicitly: why else would you fear that Sanya Richards-Ross is sending black girls a bad message, except for the assumption that Richards-Ross wears a weave because she hates her natural hair?

I think that we should, by all means, challenge Eurocentric standards of beauty and question our own motivations behind our beauty regimens. But there’s a difference between questioning those motivations and assuming what other people’s motivations are. When you posit that weaves or otherwise “unnatural” (whatever your definition of that may be) hairstyles inherently send would-be athletes a bad message, then you’re only further politicizing what should be an arbitrary style choice. Isn’t it ironic that that’s the exact same thing that so many black women with natural hairstyles decry?

newyorker:

This cartoon recently sparked a lively debate on The New Yorker’s Facebook page between those who felt it slighted Italian heritage, and those who felt like cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, that it was “an adult appreciation of absurdity”.  

Click-through for more from Bob Mankoff on why we’re able to enjoy derogatory jokes and disparagement humor: http://nyr.kr/LCcAxJ

Sorry, but this post at the New Yorker is wrapped up in a bunch of privilege. I don’t find this cartoon offensive, but I’m not Italian-American, either. I’d say Italian-Americans are probably seen by most people as white, but they do experience a bit of “othering,” too. This is only confirmed in Robert Mankoff’s shoddy defense: perhaps he should consider WHY the “default mob family is always Italian, even though that ethnic group has never had a mob monopoly.” I think there are compelling arguments to be made for “disparaging humor,” as the New Yorker calls it, as well as racialized humor. But this isn’t one of them—it basically parrots the same lines that have become standbys of racists, e.g. “Anyone with intelligence would get the humor in this.” Because, of course, if you don’t find the New Yorker’s cartoons humorous, you must have a deficient IQ. Stay classy, Mankoff.

Natasha Trethewey, the new U.S. poet laureate

I sat in a lecture on memory of the Civil War in the Civil Rights Movement this past weekend during my fifth-year college reunion. Another post to come: some interesting things went down.

Bonus: interviews with Trethewey here and here (h/t: thesmithian)

I was hesitant to comment upon The Help, which received a fresh wave of criticism leading up to the Oscars. But then yet another post on the film, authored by Kimberly Foster of For Harriet, happened to appear in my Tumblr dashboard:

kimberlynfoster:

Last year, Davis’ lauded work in the film adaptation of The Help propelled her back into the spotlight. The magnificence of her portrayal of Aibileen is unquestionable though the film itself has been poked, prodded, and picked apart particularly by concerned black audiences and academics.

Pushback against the film forced Viola to take the defense.  In an interview, she told Tavis Smiley all the way off saying his disdain for the film was a mindset that’s “killing the black artist.” Davis was nothing if not beautifully eloquent in her assertion that “the black artist cannot live in a revisionist place.” You couldn’t help but nod along as this brilliant Black woman argued her case.

Davis, of course, fails to take into account that Aibileen occupies the most loathsome of revisionist locales. Historians have noted that the tale of Minnie and Aibleen are not even close to accurate depictions of life in the Jim Crow south.

The most intelligent criticism of the film is based not on the fact that the women play maids but that they play mammies. Maids, you see, are real women whose stories deserve to be told with dignity and without shame. Mammies are fictive martyrs whose love for their white employers eclipses the economic and often sexual exploitation domestic workers endure(d). The Black women of The Help are the latter.

I only went to see The Help after my mother (whose mother—my grandmother—once worked as a maid in the Jim Crow South) urged me to go see it. Having seen the film, I have to disagree with the assertion that the characters of Aibileen and Minny are “mammies,” rather than maids. First of all, the very premise of the film refutes that notion: if mammies, as the Association of Black Women Historians defines them, are so contented and loyal to whites, why on earth would this film’s so-called mammies co-author a book that defames their employers, even anonymously? Personally, I found the characters to be refreshingly three-dimensional and un-stereotypical. And contrary to Foster’s argument, the film did address economic exploitation: one of the subplots involves a maid striving to earn enough money to send her son to college—and the unjust consequences of that effort.

In her post, Foster mentions Tulane professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, who has been one of The Help’s most vocal critics. Though I am generally a fan of Prof. Harris-Perry, I think her criticisms of the film miss the mark. One of her grievances, for instance, was that Skeeter’s date got as much screen time as Medgar Evers’ assassination. Well, Medger Evers is not the focus of this film; there has already been a film devoted to his assassination and his widow Myrlie Evers-Williams’ subsequent pursuit of justice. But the film is devoted to the economic and racially exploitative dynamic between black and white women in the South, so of course Skeeter gets more screen time. And Skeeter’s date has significance, in that her suitor embodies the ultimately harmful ambivalence of many Southern whites during that period: he doesn’t have anything against black folks, but to him, any acknowledgment of his peers’ exploitation and maltreatment of their domestic workers is simply causing trouble.

That’s just one point, but I think it’s emblematic of much of the criticism of The Help. Here’s Foster, again, distinguishing “maids” from “mammies”:

Mammies are fictive martyrs whose love for their white employers eclipses the economic and often sexual exploitation domestic workers endure(d).

I’ve already pointed out how the film addresses economic exploitation. But this excerpt illuminates the unfair burden I feel is often placed upon films that address some aspect of black history: they’re expected to be an all-comprehensive guide to that period. No, The Help doesn’t touch upon sexual exploitation of domestic workers. But should it have attempted to catalog every bad thing that happened to black maids in the Jim Crow South? That would have made for a very convoluted film. The Help is ostensibly about relations between black women and white women in the South, and I think it did well in addressing that scope.

It also strikes me that few, if any, of the high-profile critics of The Help actually lived through Jim Crow. I didn’t, either, which is why I was open to reactions from people I knew who did live through that era. The general consensus I’ve gotten from them is that it rang true. I also must note that Myrlie Evers-Williams wrote in support of the film. I think many black filmgoers have become so accustomed (justifiably) to negative, stereotypical portrayals that often we immediately look for flaws and fail to appreciate nuance.

All that said, I am glad that Foster’s criticism is directed toward the film itself. I’ve seen a lot of vitriol and schadenfreude directed toward Viola Davis, including in one of the comments on her post at For Harriet. But in the end, I must push back against the notion that a black actress is required to represent black women in some prescribed way, based on a few people’s notions of history and stereotypes.

(Source: kimberlynfoster)