Bettye Saar imagery at college "ghetto party"

Bettye Saar's The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) reframes the ubiquitos image of the jolly, happy-to-serve "mammy" by suggesting--with the gun-- that, contrary to common modes of representing black life on screen and in print, black people are most definately not content and that, as suggested by the black fist, revolutions are being plotted and change is impending.

At Tarleton State University, in Stephenville, TX (about sixty miles from Dallas/Fort Worth, the city of my birth), some students saw fit to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by hosting a "ghetto party." From BREITBART.com(emphasis mine):

Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.

I immedietly thought of Saar's "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima," but I can only speculate on whether or not this student was familiar with the work. It's possible that she wasn't familiar with the imagery. A quick look at Tarleton State's website shows that they offer a BFA in Fine Art but no degrees in Art History, and no art history classes either. So then why include a gun with your Aunt Jemima costume? Because it's "gangsta?" And if this student was aware of the imagery her costume referenced, what exactly was the costume mocking? Attempts by black people to assert an identity in visual representation that is threatening to the white power structure? The desire to rise up and revolt? The anger of a people who have been owned, subjugated, abused and tortured by a white power structure and who continue to be negatively affected in multiple arenas of life by the same power structure?

In the photo I found, she has her hands full with a 40oz. and some syrup and there is no gun. You can view a slideshow of the images that were posted on facebook at The Smoking Gun.

For those who don't know, "ghetto parties" are events where a predominately white group of young people (I would say it is usually people of my generation, in their teens and twenties, who throw these parties) get together to eat fried chicken, drink malt liquor and mock any and all aspects of black culture. Even though I know that these parties exist, and I know of actual people who throw them and attend them, I always find myself a little surprised when I hear of new cases.

These "incidents" bring up issues of affirmative action and equality in higher education, as well as issues of equality in the judicial system. As Philip Arthur Moore notes in response to another "ghetto party" that occured at the University of Conneticut School of Law the weekend following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, "One thing that comes to mind is the reality that the legal system will one day be run by these people. Would it be a stretch to say, then, that the legal system is racist? Because these parties surely are." You can view the facebook photos of the UConn Law School party at The Smoking Gun.

Because these students were foolish enough to post these photos to the internet, we now have visual evidence of a lot of things we already knew. When these students thought about black life, and how to impersonate it, these are the things they came up with. When they think of black people, this is what they come up with. One student asserts that "the photos of the black students in attendance were not released to the media," but what this student fails to acknowledge is the pervasiveness of socialized self-hate and the reality that inclusion of people of color does not prevent a "ghetto party" from being racist. Another thing we already know is that these students will not be expelled, and will go on to have a better shot at available jobs than their non-white classmates, and their employers and family members will most likely write this off as just a crazy college party. At least this is what I think will happen, but I would love to be proven wrong.

[edit] from Racialicious: XXL has a good solution: New rule: if you make fun of ghettos, you have to go to one.

Adesso Traducco! (Now I Translate!)

I added an AltaVista Babel Fish translator so now you can translate this blog into some other languages. Thanks to my invaluable year of World Studies in high school (where I learned that Henry VIII had syphallis), I don't recognize most of the flags on the little translator. I don't know how accurate the thing is, but when I translated the page in Italian, it seemed basically right to me, although I don't think that it can account for all the little jokes and nuances inherent in language and speech.

Some of you may know that I spent a month in Italy last summer, on a school trip. I lived in a tiny quiet town with few inhabitants and about a dozen stray dogs that roamed around. We spent our days studying, going to class, and eating delicious traditional Italian meals, and at night everyone gathered at the only bar in town (bar in the American meaning of the word). We took trips to other citys on a huge bus that seemed like it could tip over the tiny fences and roll all the way down the mountain when we took tight turns in it. Sulmona was nearby, relaxed and beautiful; Rome was overrated, hot and sticky with confusing public transit; Naples was Detroit: Italian Style; Pompeii was incredible, especially the collesseum and the erotic art; Pescara was a beach town on the Adriatic, one of the most relaxed and happy days I spent there, swimming, collecting seashells, napping on the beach; and Florence, tied with Pescara for my favorite place, was lovely, with great street shopping, drinking wine on the steps of the Duomo and the Uffizi, where I cried when I saw Botticelli's Birth of Venus in all it's hugeness--and I didn't even know I liked that painting!

What I loved the most, as indicated by what I spent most of my money on, was the food. Cheeseless thin crust pizza , gelato*, pasta, salad, briscetta, fresh mozzerella with tomato and basil, fresh bread dipped in olive oil...I miss it all very much. And of course it's very difficult to find such food in the states, unless you know an Italian nonna.

I'm looking for a part time job right now, just a little something to give me extra cash since I'm not taking any classes this semester. So I have to endure the humiliating process of convincing someone they should hire me. Today I interviewed for a position at a psuedo-Italian Panera Bread style pizzaria. It began to occur to me how much I hate establishments like these, for so many reasons, but also because they Americanize the food of other cultures and places to make it more marketable to American consumers. Where we could actually have the rich and culturally diverse country that some people feel we have, we have this watered down bastardized version of culture full of homogenous malls and shopping plazas, chain stores and franchised fast food. Included in this Americanization is the renaming of items, giving things a name with hints of another language, with strange words that usually aren't actual words in that language. American purports to be a melting pot, but the only parts of other cultures that America ever readily accepts are things that can be made marketable, things that can be enjoyed without cultural interaction. Some things are Americanized to make them more desirable to consumers, while other things are hyper-exotified for the same reason, which I guess means that that hyper-exotification also constitutes a form of Americanization (This is how I explain why I saw an Arab couple my age at Halloween USA buying Jasmine and Aladdin costumes a couple Halloweens ago--the embrace of their own exotification? self-hate? I really don't know what they were thinking). [ed. note: as a sidenote, I do feel that there is a lot more to American culture than this, and many cultural groups have managed to forge distinct identities that are included in "American culture," but I also think that their suppression and dillution is a significant and examinable part of our culture.]

I know that some American white people who are more than 2nd or 3rd generation feel like they are missing something. They are angry about this lack of culture, and feel victimized because they see others as having something that they don't. But culture is something that you have, whether you like it or not. It's a legacy that your grandparents and their grandparents create for you. You may not like this legacy, especially if it includes things that you don't want to claim or examine, but it is yours, and every part of it belongs to you in some way.

Where am I going with this? Not sure. Maybe later.
*At this time, I was a vegan-on-hiatus, because I would have starved otherwise. Italians don't do vegetarian, period, and to be vegan is pretty much unheard of. But the situation is vastly different than that in the US, because there is not the same type of food industry.

Where is the "Thirdspace"?

I recently read a blog comment in which the author was explaining how, in her life as a white woman in a relationship with a black man and with biracial children, she felt as though she occupied a "thirdspace," different than just being regular old white. My first thought was, "Oh no you don't..." but the more I thought about it, the more this "thirdspace" seemed recognizable to me. I never think of my mother as the "typical white woman," because of the experiences she has had during her life, because she fell in love with a Middle Eastern immigrant when it would have been much easier for her to marry a nice white boy, because she raised three children amidst constant comments that we did not look like her and questions about where we were adopted from, because she learned recipes, traditions, words and phrases so that we would not grow up without our culture and because when people around her make false assertions about Arabs she has the strength to tell them that they are wrong. When you are white, perceived to be white, or just not black, you are privy to a lot of racist sentiment that is shared with you based on perceived racial solidarity, because white people feel comfortable saying things to other white people that they wouldn't say in front of non-white or black people (or you could be from Small Town, Midwest, USA like me, where many people are proud to be racist and speak openly and happily on it, no matter who's around). When in relationships with non-white people, white people (theoretically) are at once witnessing the language and the viewpoints of perpetrators in an exceptionally candid way, and witnessing the damaging effects of this racism and establishing a personal vested interest in those it hurts. This might be especially painful for someone who has never experienced racism (vs. someone who has experienced it all their life and is "used to" it) and didn't think about it pre-interracial relationship. But do I consider this experience something that warrants it's own "space," something that is entirely outside the white experience or something that overlaps with the experience of being of color? No, I don't think so. Because it is heavily influenced by the factor of being white, it is inherently within the "white experience," even as white interracial daters may be shunned from their communities.