Race

I'm taking classes on literature in America in the 1900s, one of which has an emphasis on African-American literature.  There's a lot to process.  Comments made even now in blogs and forums and in the news "ping" my brain back to the content of the classes I'm taking.

Here are a couple of excerpts of posts I made in the Saloon thread on gotVirtual on the subject:

LeeHere said:  "I'm taking a class on the subject of post-1900 African-American literature with an emphasis on popular and/or pulp fiction.

We've been talking about the "politics of respectability" and the disconnect and subsequent friction between people like Booker T. Washingtonand W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X."

LeeHere said:  "I know the accusation of racism gets bandied about quite a bit...too much and sometimes inaccurately. Forum posters in general sometimes use certain go-to, universal, knee-jerk default condemnations the way lazy supervisors use tardiness to fire problem employees, i.e. it is sometimes the easiest and cleanest way to categorize or get rid of people who are difficult to deal with and define in complex and taxing ways. "Liar! Racist! Pedophile!" These are some of the most recognizable overused and misused examples of what I'm talking about. Other times posters use these accusations like mindless drones in a forum version of "The Body Snatchers." And sometimes the accusations are right on target."

Malcolm X said:  "He got the peace prize, and we got the problem.. ... If I'm following a general, and he's leading me into a battle, and the enemy tends to give him rewards, or awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets a peace award before the war is over." - Malcolm X about Martin Luther King, Jr. - Malcolm X, Interview with Claude Lewis, December 1964 (after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize) 

A partial reading list from my current classes. Anyone read any of them? Thoughts, comments?

The Book of Daniel by Doctorow
Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy
Rat Bohemia by Sarah Shulman
Aye, & Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany
Black No More by George S. Shuyler
Bloodchild & Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler
Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes
Daddy Cool by Goines
Of One Blood by Hopkins
Spook Who Sat By the Door by Greenlee
Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability (Mapping Racisms) by E. Francis White
Noir by noirs: towards a new realism in Black cinema by Manthia Diawara
The Black Dick: race, sexuality, and discourse in the L.A. novels of Walter Mosley - African American detective novels by Stephen Berger
WEB Du Bois
Langston Hughes
Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
Iceberg Slim

A couple of themes:

The Harlem Renaissance
The Politics of Respectability
Double-consciousness paradigms
Art
Paraliterature
Pulp Fiction
Modernism
Mono & polygenesis
The "tragic mulatto" cliché
The African American canon
Pan-Africanism



This is from the introduction to "Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability (Mapping Racisms)" by E. Francis White.





http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1400/1560_ch1.pdf
http://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_continent_of_our_bodies.html?id=FGS9WWmaE7QC

Some incredibly complex issues here. Real noodle cookers. Very interesting.




On the subject of different approaches to assimilation into White American culture and that aforementioned "double-consciousness":

Wikipedia said:

Du Bois thought blacks should seek higher education, preferably liberal arts. He also believed blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds. Booker T. Washington believed assimilating and fitting into the "American" culture was the best way for blacks to move up in society. While Washington stated that he did not receive any racist insults until his later years, Du Bois said blacks have a "Double-Conscious" mind in which they have to know when to act "white" and when to act "black". Booker T. Washington believed that teaching was a duty, but Du Bois believed it was a calling.

Wikipedia said:

During the 1920s, Du Bois engaged in a bitter feud with Marcus Garvey. They disagreed over whether African Americans could be assimilated as equals into American society (the view held by Du Bois). Their dispute descended to personal attacks, sometimes based on ancestry. Du Bois wrote, "Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world. He is either a lunatic or a traitor."[23] Garvey described Du Bois as "purely and simply a white man's nigger" and "a little Dutch, a little French, a little Negro ... a mulatto ... a monstrosity."[24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois


An interesting question bringing the historical questions into a modern-day perspective from a blog called "The Professor":

Edward Carson said:

Jaylon Williams found this piece and thought it would make an interesting discussion about notions of race, politics, nationalism, and war. As many of us already know, Muhammad Ali lost his title belts and went to jail because he refused to fight in the Vietnam War. I have spoken to a number of black folks who too stated that they would have done the same thing Ali did. The general response I have heard is why fight for America during a time when black folks were so highly discriminated against. With Obama leading a number of polls in his race to win the Democratic primary, Jaylon asked me if I thought American blacks were now being permitted to assimilate into mainstream American culture? Malcolm X spent a lot of time with Ali as both wrestled with this. With Obama appealing to so many people of different races, I ask the question: Have we as Americans moved beyond the problem or race?

http://ecarson.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/malcolm-x-on-being-american/

"Have we as Americans moved beyond the problem of race?"

Tarzan said: ↑

What is your point, by the way?

I've got my head in books from the early part of the 20th century and the conversations in and about those books seem relevant to our time and I find it interesting and worthy of conversation, if anyone else wants to have it.

There is a lot to this, but to boil it down to the one, two or three things that got me started talking about it here, I'd say the quickness and sometimes unsubstantiated thoughtlessness with which people are sometimes called "racists" on forums, the creation and protection of sacred cows on forums and the idea that discussing a racial slur in any context is a bad thing to be avoided and censured. Martin Luther King, Jr. for example, could be said to currently hold a kind of revered and near "uncriticizable" place in modern culture. If someone does criticize Martin Luther King, Jr., would the act of criticism itself attract or earn the label of "racist"? Are my quotes here, some from scholarly works, referencing racial slurs, reinforcing language that should be allowed and encouraged to die out? That's my point.